


Old World

by Mjus



Category: One Piece, xxxHoLic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Character Swap, Gen, Minor Character Death, Original Character Death(s), Sea Devil - Freeform, Starvation, Survival, crossover but not really, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-29
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2018-10-12 17:02:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 33,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10495539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mjus/pseuds/Mjus
Summary: It is a normal day at sea when Luffy and his crew arrives to an island where only one tree grows.In a world where the sea was stolen a shaman and a nameless girl fight for the survival of the last humans. But the shaman has made a wish to the Spacetime Witch she can't give fair payment for. To compensate she is given Luffy as a price for her suffering.“Run,” she wheezed. “There’s no more time.”“You too,” Luffy said lowly but decisively. Lucky for him there was no monster in their direct surroundings.“I can’t,” the woman whispered. “When the sun goes down and the darkness falls, the Rock-beasts will open their eyes and follow the trail of blood. You have to leave me here.”“Will you be okay?”Sandman grinned joylessly at him. “Of course not. Leave me to die or die with me.”





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shiva1](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=shiva1).



> This story has been in the workings for almost five years now... you know, as a side project to everything else I'm up to! Don't know about the quality though... Uh, please enjoy either way ^^;

It was the middle of the day when the space-time witch lifted her gaze from her beer can to greet her costumer; a young woman wearing tight rags and two Japanese katana at her hip and a third one in her gloved hand, sheathed. Over her shoulders hung a rough, greyish cloth with a hood in the same material as the rest of her cloths. Her dark tan showed she spent many hours in the sun and her thin face and body that she ate way too little.

“You decided to come in person, huh? I thought you would use smoother ways of contact.”

“I know, but I think you probably also knows why I’ve come like this, Yûko-san.”

“Yes,” the witch said calmly, taking the last swig of her beer and grieved the can’s emptiness. “Very reckless, I must say. But you have come here because you have a wish, so let me hear it.” Discarding the empty can, Yûko opened another one.

“I want her to be free, but there is no freedom in our world.”

“That depends on what you want to free that girl from,” the witch pointed out. “You can free her from her powers, and you can free her from the responsibility.”

“No. What I want the most is for her to dream. I know she has a dream, have been trying to chase it all of her life but always chokes it saying it’s futile and not worth it, that dreams are useless for… I wish to send her to a different world where she is free to dream.”

Yûko quietly watched the grass as she thought about it. “Such a wish has a high price.”

“I am aware of that.”

Keeping a straight face Yûko downed half her beer. She knew about this young woman’s world’s condition, which made her wish a call for disaster. However, there was no desire for her friend’s position, making the wish pure and honest. Still…

“You don’t have enough to pay for your wish,” Yûko stated.

“I… don’t? This isn’t enough?” she asked, holding up the katana in her hand.

“It is not enough, but let me correct myself; I can’t accept fair payment for your wish from you. Only you have the power to purify the poison that plagues your world. Taking that power would spell doom on your world completely.”

The woman lowered her gaze and bit her lip. She knew that already, but it shouldn’t matter. There was no more time. There was no more hope. “I understand. So how am I supposed to pay for my wish?”

Yûko frowned. “Are you really willing to pay that much for it? Why don’t you just give her your way of moving between words?”

“Because it demands knowledge of the place one wishes to go to, and because even if I gave her the chance, she wouldn’t use it.”

The space-time witch watched her client with displeasure. Even if it was a wish she could grant, the consequences of that wish could be catastrophic. Still, the wish was so hot and vivid Yûko couldn’t find more excuses to deny it. She would have to compromise.

“Very well. I shall grant your wish. But…”

“Yes?”

“I have no intention of being the catalyst of your world’s downfall; in that case your original payment is too high. Therefore, for the future, for your suffering, a price will be paid to you.”

 

* * *

 

In a different world far from the one the space-time witch and her client discussed payment in we find wild and untamed seas dotted with islands of various sizes and nature. This world only has one actual continent, one that circles the world; a continent made from red rocks, thereof its name; Red Line. The seas on both sides of this enormous continent have since ancient times been dangerous and filled with both small silvery fishes as well as demonic monsters the size of islands. This is a world ruled mainly by a single government, a unity of more than a hundred and seventy countries. However, there are a few kingdoms standing outside this world government. Those are lawless zones without the government’s military protection, and therefore the people of those kingdoms can be treated like trash by the rest of the world.

Standing up against the ruling government is a revolutionary army, its goal being to overthrow the order of this world to build a new one. The revolutionaries are led by a man named Dragon; the world’s most dangerous man. Only a few knows his real name is Monkey D. Dragon, the son of marine vice admiral Monkey D. Garp.

Beside the revolutionaries, the world government has one enemy on the seas, although the hatred towards said enemy most of the time is one-sided. While each country has its own military force, there are numerous battles being fought out at the seas, because the government’s enemy is not one person, not even an organized group of people. They are pirates.

In the history there is a hole, a century that was never recorded so nobody alive knows what happened. What is known is that before the “Void century” there was no world government, and when time once again was being recorded the government had complete power and the pirates sailing the seas were only a mild problem, no matter how strong they were. But perhaps fifty years ago a certain pirate took a lead and concerned the rulers. He sailed around the world for a few years before he entered the Grand Line, the most outrageous and untamed sea of them all. Entire fleets of marines or pirates couldn’t defeat this single man and his crew. He conquered this wild world and earned the title of the man who had acquired everything the world had to offer; wealth, fame and power. He became known as the King of Pirates, Gold Roger.

Roger was the government’s greatest enemy, and they never managed to capture him. Actually, perhaps to some relief for the ministers, Roger gave up and turned himself in. It was decided that this dangerous man, the devil of the seas, would be officially executed in the town he was once born; Loguetown in East Blue, the calmest of all the seas. But the King of Pirates wasn’t going to be good and just die and disappear from the world. Because of a foolish marine officer’s question, Gold Roger answered with a wide smirk.

“My treasures, you ask? If you want them, you can have them. Look for them! I left it all at that one place!”

After having said that, Gold Roger died, executed with a grin on his face.

Believing their greatest enemy was gone, the government relaxed. That’s why they were caught by surprise by the tsunami of pirates setting sails and heading for the Grand Line, conquered only by the King of Pirates himself. People dreaming of the great treasure Gold Roger had left behind swarmed the world, and the government had never hated the King of Pirates as much as they did after his death.

Today the Pirate Era is still on its peak. One of the newly upcoming pirates is quite a peculiar one; commonly known as Mugiwara no Luffy, or Luffy with the straw hat. His real name is Monkey D. Luffy. This adventurous young man has a long merit list already, though his career started not even a year ago. His crew contains of eight people, if that’s the right thing to call them, but it’s the easiest definition. From Zoro, the first to join the crew, to Brook, the newest member, they all feel the same strong loyalty and friendship for their captain. They are a small but tight crew. That is why they are about to face one of their toughest escapades so far.

 

* * *

 

Thousand Sunny, the Mugiwara crew’s proud ship sailed forwards in the bright sun, occasionally hidden behind little white clouds. Usopp, the crew’s sniper and one of the world’s greatest liars, had just spotted an island, and Luffy, being Luffy, couldn’t wait to sniff out all the cool adventures this island could bring him.

By the railing stood Brook, a living skeleton due to a devil fruit, with a steaming cup of tea in one bony hand. “Such an odd sight,” he hummed softly.

 “A-are you sure about this, Luffy?” Usopp asked and nervously tried to hide from the island behind the railing. “What if there are huge monsters hiding in that mountain.”

“Really? Monsters?” the little reindeer doctor, TonyTony Chopper jumped to attention and mirrored Usopp’s nervousness.

“Is that really an island?” Zoro asked.

“It looks more like a mountain sticking up of the sea to me,” Franky the cyborg, shipwright agreed with Zoro.

“Have I ever led you wrong before?” Nami the navigator, a pretty and well-shaped woman, asked pointedly. “The log pose is pointing straight to the centre of that mountain. How do we get in? Are we supposed to climb?” She used a spyglass to look for anywhere to dock.

“Nami-san is so cute when she thinks,” the cook Sanji, the only one who wasn’t looking at the island, sighed in bliss.

“It must be a volcano!” Usopp burst out, scaring Chopper.

“A volcano?!” Chopper’s breath hitched in his throat, before he tilted his head to the side. “What’s that?”

Robin, historian and archaeologist chuckled. “It is a mountain filled with magma, melted rock.”

“Really? Rock can melt?!”

“If it’s hot enough. But it’s only inside volcanoes the heat ever reaches such degrees.”

Chopper’s brain started spinning and he went momentarily unresponsive. He was after all born on a winter island, and only after he joined the crew he found there the world outside his island wasn’t filled with snow. The concept of something being hot enough for _rock_ to melt was a little beyond what he could imagine.

“Oi! There are holes in the wall!” Luffy called out. “What are those?”

“They must be the monsters’ dens,” Usopp mused hoarsely. “Wait. Guys, I can feel it. The deadly Can’t-Land-On-That-Island bacteria…”

“Then you watch the ship,” Zoro decided unfazed.

“Hey!”

Nami glanced past the spyglass to spot the holes her captain referred to. “I can’t see anything in the holes,” she said slowly as she examined them. “Can’t tell if they’re natural or not either.”

“Of course not,” Usopp said like he knew. “The monsters dug them out with their five… no ten meter long talons to capture innocent pirates trying to enter the island!”

“What?! Really?!” Chopper cried out, to which Usopp started painting out a picture and made up a short but entertaining story about how he encountered the monsters before and how he defeated them. Chopper was the only listener, but one was better than none, and the reindeer was a really good listener.

Sanji sniffed. For a second he thought he smelled something familiar that wasn’t salt, wood or the tar Franky used to paint the ship’s outside. The cook turned his head around to localise the smell, but couldn’t find it again, so he dismissed it as imagination.

“Let’s dock!” Luffy cried out excitedly.

“Aye!”

“What?! No!” Usopp and Chopper cried.

Nami turned to the crew. “Franky take the helm. Zoro, Sanji, mind the sails, catch the starboard wind. Usopp and Robin, check for rocks under the surface. Brook, take place in the crow’s nest.”

“Roger.”

“Luffy, we’ll need your help to get to the island, so don’t go ahead of yourself,” the navigator said sternly.

“Ah, okay Nami.”

Nami could only hope her captain actually would do as she said, but figured that if Luffy had to choose between going on adventures alone or with his friends, he’d definitely rather have someone with him. After all, he hated being alone more than anything.

“Nami-chan, I think I see a bridge ahead,” Robin called out.

“Really?”

Nami ran to the bow and followed the dark-haired woman’s pointing finger. Sure enough; something that really looked like a rock bridge pointed out of the mountain wall.

“That is definitely manmade,” the navigator stated and turned back to the crew. “Luffy, help Zoro and Sanji straighten the sails. Franky, steer towards that bridge.”

“I hear you,” the cyborg answered and turned the helm, skilfully steering the ship around the rocks, heeding Robin and Usopp’s warnings of underwater obstacles.

Nami waited for the ship to be in position. “Alright. Take in the sails and drop the anchor.”

Perfect timing as usual. Thousand Sunny slowed and gently stopped right by the bridge. Luffy however was off the ship and inside the tunnel the bridge led to before Sunny came to a stop. Much as usual.

“There’s just no stopping him,” Nami sighed. Sometimes she wished her captain could calm down just a bit, but at the same time she probably would never want him to be any different.

But as said before, Luffy hated being alone, so when he had checked out the tunnel he came running back to his crew shouting excitedly; “Oi! Everyone, you have to see this!” and ran back into the tunnel.

“Maybe he found something edible,” Sanji suggested and jumped off Sunny’s deck.

“I don’t think so,” Usopp argued and followed the cook.

Nami turned to Zoro, Franky and Brook who had just come down from the crow’s nest. “You guard the ship.”

It was not a suggestion. Brook humbly accepted the order, Franky had the same plan, but Zoro grumbled and boringly sat against the railing to take a nap.

 

* * *

 

Somewhere else, in a different universe, a young woman returned to her village protected from the sun by a white mountain full of holes and tunnels.

“Shaman, where have you been?” an old man demanded.

“Controlled the surrounding area, Mayor,” the woman answered indifferently.

“My daughter is hungry. Go hunt.”

The woman stopped in her tracks and turned cold green eyes on the older man. “If you want food, grab a weapon and hunt it down yourself, old man.”

“Don’t dare to use that tone against me, Shaman. I found this hideout…”

“But not the water,” the woman cut him off and unsheathed a black sword, pointing it to the old man’s throat. “Never forget this, Mayor. You found this protection, yes, but without the girl to find you water and me to hunt for food you’d have joined the dead long ago.”

“Exactly,” the old man growled. “You are responsible for finding food and keeping us alive. We must survive, so find food for us, or else…”

The woman grinned. “Or else what? You’ll chase me out? Torture me? Go ahead, you old fart. Threaten me as hard as you can. Ask me to leave and I will. In difference to you, I have nothing but my own life to lose.” She sheathed her sword again. “I’ll go hunt when I feel like it, because I don’t care if you or your daughter starve.”

“You can’t do that!”

“Watch me.”

She left the old man there. This had occurred many times before. When she was younger, when she had still believed in hope, she had gone to hunt whenever anyone asked for food, which could be a few times a day. Today she knew better, and her rebellion against the mayor was driving him over the edge. The only thing keeping her safe was the fact that she really was the only one who could hunt down the only food available.

“Shaman.”

She turned towards the speaker; a girl who went without a name. Her appearance was not much different from anyone else. Her hair was black and eyes grey, her skin rough from the sun and the harsh life they lived here.

“Take me out hunting,” she begged.

“The villagers won’t like that.”

“Please.”

The shaman sighed. “And here I just told Mayor I refused to go hunt. If you’re prepared, let’s go.”

The nameless girl followed the shaman towards one of the exits. They passed a man sitting against a rock and the shaman turned to him.

“If you see Mayor, tell him I’ve taken the girl out hunting.”

The man’s only answer was an indifferent wave of his hand. He, like many others before him, had given up hope, but still didn’t want to die.

 

* * *

 

Sanji, Usopp, Nami, Robin and Chopper followed their captain through the smooth tunnel, heading slightly upwards. It wasn’t very long before they could see the light of the tunnel’s end where Luffy had stopped, waiting for his crew to catch up.

The sight that met them was breath-taking. Millions of years ago this mountain had definitely been a volcano that had erupted one last time before going to sleep forever. Over the years, helped by rain and a large chunk of soil that had miraculously ended up here, grass and a single proud oak tree had begun to grow. In the bottom of this valley rainwater had collected into a pond. The sun couldn’t properly reach this hidden place; still it was as bright as the outside world. Nami especially was breaking into an excited squeal.

“Diamonds! The walls are covered with raw diamonds!”

“This much… how is it possible?” Usopp breathed.

“Why are there diamonds in the walls?” Chopper asked, gaping like a fish.

“Diamonds are created from the charcoal the magma creates,” Robin explained, like an automatic answer since she too couldn’t take her eyes off the glistering walls. “But I never thought there could be this much inside a single volcano.”

“Amazing,” Sanji said.

“Hey, look at that!” Luffy called out and pointed.

“What?”

Instead of answering, Luffy took off into the valley, heading for the tree. His crew followed out of experience; if they let Luffy roam free, there was no telling what kind of trouble he’d attract.

It was Usopp who saw it first.

“Houses? Are there really people living here?”

“I’d imagine,” Nami said, momentarily returned from the cash register in her brain that continued trying to count the value of all the diamonds she could see. “That bridge we landed on, the people who live here must have made it in order to go out fishing or something. They can’t live on grass…” Just to make sure, she turned to Sanji. “Right?”

“I wouldn’t recommend grass as food for humans,” the cook said. “But if you’re hungry enough and there is nothing else to eat, even grass and the leaves and acorn from the oak will do as food.”

Luffy stopped in front of one of the houses. “Hello! Is there people here?”

At first nothing happened and Luffy’s crew caught up with him just in time to stop him from walking straight into the house.

A round window opened on the top floor and a young girl with red braids and freckles leaned outside. She stared at them with wide, blinking, reddish eyes.

“Hi. Do you have any food?” Luffy broke the ice.

Instead of answering the girl blinked again and closed the window.

“That probably means they don’t have food to share in this place,” Usopp tried to explain the girl’s behaviour.

The door to the house suddenly slammed open and the redhead stood in front of them with a cold look in her eyes.

“Who are you and what do you want in my valley?”

“Huh?”

Everybody stared at the short girl. Was she a devil fruit user or where did that attitude come from?

“Well, miss…” Sanji started with a small smile.

“Shut up, ugly bitch. I was talking to the hot guy.”

The pirates blinked and turned around. Had somebody else come up behind them without their notice? Nope, nobody was there.

“Don’t you dare make a fool of me, man-whore! Of course I meant the man wearing the straw hat. I am way too beautiful to waste my time on blond airheads.”

If they were staring before, they were gawking now. Man-whore??? Luffy was the hot guy??? Sanji had never been this hurt by a woman before. What had he done to be treated like this by a pretty lady?

Nami couldn’t help it. She looked strangely at the girl and glanced between Luffy and Sanji. In matters of looks Sanji won without even trying, because Luffy never cared much about his appearance.

“She’s got weird taste,” Nami stated quietly.

“Indeed,” Usopp agreed.

“We’re just checking out the place,” Luffy said, letting Nami, Usopp and Chopper care for Sanji’s wounded pride.

“Oh. So you’re yet another hoard of drooling beasts blinded by the walls here.”

It was a statement, and one Nami didn’t like. Yes, she did plan to steal all the diamonds, or at least as many as Sunny could carry without sinking, but that didn’t make her a drooling beast. This redhead needed to be put in place. Soon.

Screams carried down to where they stood.

“Onee-chan!”

“Rose-chan! Look out for the pirates!”

Two boys were running for their lives with newly formed bruises and a bump each. However, when they noticed the redhead surrounded by strangers they started wielding their fishing tools as weapons.

“You pirates! Don’t touch onee-chan!”

“What are you doing with my bride!? Prepare to die!”

It was probably meant as a serious threat, but it fell flat before the pirates. They had heard that phrase too many times to count, and they weren’t dead yet.

“What are they up to?” Usopp asked.

“If I knew,” Nami sighed. “Robin, if you please.”

“I’m at it, Nami-chan.”

The boys fell on their faces when Robin’s hands grew out of the grass and grabbed their ankles.

“Fail!” the redhead yelled angrily. “Tanpopo! Kiro! What are you doing screaming about pirates and falling flat on your noses? Kiro, if you ever want to even dream about marrying me, you must be cooler than ice. Get up, Tanpopo! As my little brother you can’t act like a dog!”

“But onee-chan…” the smallest boy whined, rubbing his green nose, coloured by the grass from the fall. His bright blond hair stood out in all directions, decorated with some greenery of grass and a leaf from the oak.

“Rose-chan, a pirate ship is anchored outside,” the second boy in his early teens yelled, he too blond with his hair in a ponytail. “We were just defeat… I mean we just defeated the demons, but some of them must have landed and come here. Admit it, you vermin!” he yelled turned to Luffy and his crew. “You are pirates!”

“Yes we are,” Luffy answered simply.

“Huh?”

For a moment the two parties of people stared at each other. Then the blond teen started laughing and stood in a proud pose.

“Fear me, you pirates. I am Kiro the mighty, the ruler of Bright Oak Island. Just now I killed your friends and sunk your ship. You better leave before I get started on you!”

Not even Luffy would fall for that lie. Usopp felt like puking over the fellow’s lying-skills. Nami, Robin, Sanji and Chopper glanced behind the bragging boy where the smaller one sat staring at them with tearful eyes and shaking from head to toe with fright.

“That Zoro,” Nami sighed. “He just can’t hold back.”

“He really never does,” Robin smiled.

“Looks like he didn’t use his swords at least. Good for them.” Sanji stated.

“Should I treat your wounds?” asked Chopper, always the kind doctor.

Kiro’s face lit up with a slight blush. “What are you saying? I just told you I killed your friends! Don’t you care?”

“They wouldn’t die so easily,” Luffy said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

A sturdy woman suddenly exited one of the other houses. “What’s going on out here?!”

 

* * *

 

Not a single cloud on the sky. In this world that was the norm since a hundred years back. Two women, carefully covered from the sunlight walked steadily over the rough, crumbling rock ground, occasionally spotted with a small patch of dry sand. There was no wind either. Nothing green grew within eyeshot.

They arrived to a steep hill and walked around it until they came to the shadowed side. The shaman looked around, looking for any sort of danger, before she started climbing rather easily. The girl in her company followed without a word. This side, this particular place the women climbed, was the only part that the sun never reached, so it was a safer trip with less chance of the rock giving in under their weight.

Once up the shaman stood prepared to draw her black sword as she looked around, the girl in her tow waited just beneath the cliff’s edge.

The coast was clear and the shaman straightened. The other girl heaved herself up and looked with sadness at the skeleton of a since long dead, grand tree. Once upon a time this place had been lush and green. Seeing its state now you couldn’t imagine. Everywhere you looked it was only rocks, sand and dry, twisted remains of wood and trees.

The shaman ignored the past and present of this place and started walking with purposeful steps. The girl hurried to catch up. Straying too far from the shaman was dangerous.

They arrived to a cave mouth and the girl instantly took cover between two rocks beside it while the shaman placed herself right in the opening, sword drawn, and used her ring, a metal piece with a small claw on it, to cut her face under both eyes and waited.

Behind the rocks the girl shook from slight fear. She trusted the shaman’s abilities, had to, but this world was so full of dangers that not even the most careful person was safe. If the shaman went out of luck one day, that would be the end for their people. She already wore the scars to prove she wasn’t invincible.

The shaman waved a hand to signal there was no danger around and the girl sighed from relief.

The cave was narrow to begin with, but after a few yards it widened so that both women could stand straight. The sunlight didn’t reach in here and the darkness was pleasantly cooler. The shaman took off her hood and opened her cloak to reach for the medallion around her neck and sent a silent prayer. The medallion answered and slowly it spread a gentle glow around them, lighting the path.

The shaman walked first, all senses alert. In difference to the bright, dry outside world, it was harder to see the dangers and protect oneself here.

To not lose her light, the girl grabbed a tight hold of the shaman’s rough cloak. The tunnel turned and twisted, narrowed and widened, all the time going slightly downhill. Once it split in two, but the shaman dove into the left one without even stopping. She had walked here enough times to know her way around.

At the first faint sound of water drops, the shaman put the light out. Stopping for a moment, letting their eyes get used to the darkness and calm their minds from the initial fear it always caused, the shaman gently pushed the other girl against the wall and acted as a human shield in front of her, just in case something would appear from behind them.

Still nothing. The cave seemed empty today, but you’d never know. There could be something sleeping in the cave they were about to enter.

Deeming it was safe the shaman once again moved forward, the girl instantly following.

Crawling only a few yards forward the shaman turned the last bend and looked into their goal; a former den of some animal where a little pond of water illuminated the cave with a faint, blue light.

Nothing was here. Both women slid out of the opening and jumped down to the ground. The shaman stood on guard by their only exit, but the girl went straight to the other side of the pond where two plants grew. Plants with thick, watery leaves the girl instantly put in her mouth and thankfully chewed on. They couldn’t take any water from this place of fear it would run dry one day and stop nurturing the plants that were just as important as the water.

Still chewing on her third leaf the girl opened a small pouch and put some leaves in it. Not too many. In order to survive, saving and reserving was the first, second and last rule.

The shaman flinched. A putrid smell reached her nose and she leaped over the pond. The other girl jumped, quickly closed her pouch and dove into the darkest corner, the shaman covering her with drawn sword.

The stench of rotting flesh got stronger, making the women’s stomachs turn, before a toad-lookalike creature the size of a pony slowly crawled into the cavern, its eyes blind and tongue hanging out, waving from side to side as it functioned much the same as a snake’s. The difference between this beast and a snake was that a snake is only poisonous when it bites. The mare touch of this toad-thing could cause pain that was worse than dying.

The blood on the shaman’s cheeks had already dried, but it smelled strong enough for the toad to notice and turn its head towards it.

Wasting no time the shaman attacked, cutting the creature right between the eyes, killing the first brain. Using the momentum she flipped her body around, the sword cutting the monster’s head open before being pulled out and cut off the back of the body where the second brain was located.

The monster fell into a twitching heap, dead, but the shaman’s duty wasn’t over just yet. Sheathing the black sword she used to kill, she instead pulled out a second sword with a blade that flashed white even in the faint blue glow down here. Somewhere in time the one who forged this sword had cursed it and given it a name. The name was forgotten, the curse remained. Using the medallion, pulling it over the head and tying it around the sword’s handle to turn the curse around, the shaman started praying, the medallion glowing with a bright azure light, and struck the sword into the monster’s neck. At first nothing happened, but slowly the rotten stench cleared away and, instead of poison, water started to leak out of the body.

From her hiding place in the corner of the carven the other girl was praying too; praying that this monster was indeed alone and that nothing would appear in the exit hole behind the shaman’s back. Normally the monsters were alone, but there had been encounters with as many as three of them at the same time. This once they had been lucky, because these beasts looked slow, but in reality they were impossibly fast to strike. If caught by surprise even the shaman was an easy target.

Once certain the monster’s poison was completely purified the shaman pulled her sword out of the body and put the medallion back around her neck. This was how the hunt worked. The only prey were these venomous, hideous monsters that crawled underground, and only the shaman’s prayer could take away the poison so that you could eat them.

Using the cursed sword the shaman cut off the prey’s legs and put them in a bag she had worn on her back under the cloak. The body of the monster didn’t look appetizing even to a very hungry person. But they couldn’t leave the body here. Purified or not it was still a corpse. It could poison the water here and kill the plants. Neither girl would take that risk, the plants were too important, so the girl took the rope that held her rags together around her waist and tied it around the dead body instead. She would carry it, because the shaman always needed both hands free in case they would meet more monsters in the tunnel.

 

* * *

 

“So, you folks are pirates.”

“Yup,” Luffy answered.

“Did you come for the diamonds?”

“No,” Luffy answered.

“Then what brought you to this island?”

“Adventure!” Luffy answered with a fist pump, earning a hard pat on his head from Nami.

“We followed the log pose,” the navigator explained, pointing at the tool around her wrist while Luffy straightened his hat.

“I see.”

The two groups of people; Luffy with his crew and a sturdy woman with a big oak leaf standing up from her hair bun with her husband and the three teens, sat across each other in the grass under the oak tree. The old woman’s name was Mama Oak, the island’s leader.

“A lot of people who come here take refuge in the caves in the mountain until the log is set,” Mama Oak told them. “You found the bridge, no?”

“Ah, that’s right, a stone bridge,” Luffy confirmed.

“Normally the bridge is underwater, but today it was low ebb and our boys here,” the old woman looked behind her at Kiro and the other, younger boy, “went out fishing for us. We didn’t expect guests during the time they were out.”

“I have a question,” Robin said, raising her hand.

“Yes?”

“The young lady…”

“My name is Rose,” the redhead said snottily with her nose in the air and a scornful look at the older woman. “And I am way prettier than you, ugly wench.”

“No, you’re not,” Usopp mumbled under his breath.

“Rose-san,” Robin started again, though slightly taken aback by the teenage girl’s comment. “You said people came to take the diamonds before. The walls are still covered with them, so I suppose those people didn’t manage. How did you chase them away?”

“Some of the caves around the mountain lead here,” Rose said nonchalantly. “But only two of those are safe to use. All the others are filled with traps. Even the dead-end ones.”

“Thank you,” Robin said happily, surprising the redhead. “That is very good to know. Now we know how to make a safe escape with the diamonds.”

“Huh?! What are you saying? You can’t do that! There’s no way you can tell which exit is the safe one.”

“You forget something, little girl,” Nami smirked evilly with a hard glint in her eyes. “We are pirates. We know how to make you speak.”

“That’s right,” Usopp picked up with his creepiest look. “I wonder how many needles I can stick under your nails before you spill the beans.”

Rose flinched back frightened and Kiro moved into a protective stance.

“This is exactly why you will never be the valley’s head, Rose-brat,” Mama Oak said sternly, completely unfazed by the pirates’ threatening manners. Through the conversation her eyes had strayed to the straw hat wearing boy. She could sense something emit from him, like a scent. Or was it something she could see deep in his black eyes. Normally that colour of eyes would look like impenetrable glass, but this man’s eyes were shining with an inner light, or strength. His face wasn’t of a smart person, but maybe he owned some respect.

“Grandmother,” Rose whined.

“Enough. Leave this to me and learn some wisdom. In difference to you, these two young pirate ladies both have brains.”

“Oh, that was harsh,” Usopp mumbled.

Sanji was about to say something when a gentle breeze suddenly washed over them, carrying a scent of something familiar.

“Huh? How can the wind blow down here?” Usopp asked out loud.

“This is the second time today,” Mama Oak said with slight surprise. “We usually only gets them once or twice a week.”

“Smells nice,” Sanji spoke.

“Mint,” the older woman smiled. “It grows every here and there in this valley.”

“I see.” Of course Sanji hadn’t recognized the smell right away. Mint wasn’t a scent you expected to find anywhere on the sea. “Which reminds me, what do you eat here? You don’t seem to keep animals.”

“Oh, gosh no,” Mama Oak said with a laugh. “If we kept animals all the grass and plants would be ruined. The layer of soil is quite thin and it’s not like we can bring any more here. The oak grows on the place where the earth is the thickest.”

“But where did the soil come from?” Chopper asked confused. “Isn’t this a volcano with melted rock inside?”

“It is indeed a sleeping volcano, little one. Counting the diamonds it must have been quite active in its glory days, but I don’t know how the earth ended up in here. When our ancestors arrived some hundreds of years ago, the oak was already growing here, and the people gave this mountain the name Bright Oak Island.”

“Yeah, that guy was saying something like that,” Luffy remembered and pointed to the blond guy sitting close to the red-haired Rose-girl.

“I’m not ‘that guy’, you moron! I am Kiro the mighty, and I’ll be…”

“Forever the bigmouthed little punk,” Mama Oak finished curtly.

“That’s right,” Rose agreed, killing the rest of Kiro’s self-confidence. The pirates sympathized with him, just a little.

“So what do you eat?” Luffy asked, now curious.

“Fish when my husband brings ‘em in,” Mama Oak smiled proudly to her husband who this far hadn’t said a single word. “Then we can grow a little rice in the pond at the valley’s bottom, some wheat to make bread and anything else we can grow in this soil.”

For a moment Luffy just stared at her. In his brain he reread the list of things Mama Oak had just said they ate and found the lack of one ingredient very disturbing. “WHAT??? NO MEAT???”

“Of course not, boy. We are vegetarians.”

Luffy fainted. An island without meat was for him a living nightmare. But just as fast as he fell down, he bounced up, still with a horrified look on his face.

“How stupid can you get not eating meat!?” he yelled.

Sanji immediately sprung up along with Mama Oak’s husband.

“How dare you insult a lady!?” they screamed and kicked the pirate captain into the oak’s trunk where he disappeared.

Everybody stared blankly at the brown, unharmed and innocent tree trunk. Not a single scratch, and still they were all as certain they had just seen the dark-haired boy fly head first into it, but there was no boy to find. Everybody rubbed their eyes and looked again. Usopp almost expected the tree to burp.

“What happened?” Nami asked tensely.

 

* * *

 

With slight difficulties because of their load the two women were finally at the end of the tunnel. It was a relief to know they’d soon be back outside where they didn’t have to be afraid of the poisonous monsters of the underground. Of course there were still monsters in the outside world, but they weren’t hidden by darkness. The shaman helped pull the monster’s body through the last narrow tunnel before she dimmed the light of her medallion and they stopped to let their eyes slowly become used to the brightness of the sun outside.

The nameless girl’s stomach suddenly made a bubbly sound and the shaman sprung up with the black sword at the ready. They stayed still. Nothing seemed to have heard the sound.

Both women let out a breath of relief and the shaman walked another few steps towards the tunnel’s end, the other girl short on her heels. In this manner; stopping after every few steps the women made it out without hurting their eyes. The shaman controlled the surroundings before she and the girl went to the south-side’s cliff and hauled the dead body of the monster over it. They would have to wait for a bit now before they too climbed down the other side of the cliff. The shaman kept an eye on what happened below, but the other girl turned and walked over to the dead tree.

A long time ago this place had been alive and the tree in the centre had been a home to birds and insects. Birds were long gone. Nothing could live that close to the sun anymore, and with all water being found only underground the world’s birds had perished.

An arm suddenly wrapped around her shoulders and pressed her back against a female body.

“Shaman?” she breathed.

“You and I share the same responsibility of being the hope of the last humans,” the shaman breathed in her ear. “That’s why we’ve both given up on our dreams, but I wish for at least you to be able to find yours.”

Using her free hand the shaman pushed the other girl into the dead tree trunk where she disappeared.

 

* * *

 

The space-time witch watched over the occurrences from afar. The same person, born in two different worlds and ages, crossed each other inside a tree, alive on one side and dead on the other. Both of them were different in body and mind, but they shared the same responsibility of other peoples’ lives. But in the passing the girl suddenly acted up and changed her course slightly. Yûko just watched. The girl could awkward all she wanted, she still would end up where the shaman had wished.

“Alea jacta est,” the witch spoke, though the shaman couldn’t hear her. “The price is paid and I have fulfilled your wish. So what will you do now, I wonder.”


	2. Two worlds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luffy finds himself in a dry world running from monsters disguised as rocks with a shaman.
> 
> The Straw Hat Pirates have lost their captain and in his stead they have a nervous wreck of a girl who don't even know what pirates are.

In a dry world where the human race was near extinction stood a lonesome woman staring sadly at the white trunk of a since long dead tree. In this world, since she was a child, she had only had one friend, a friend who had fallen deeper into despair than anyone else and wasn’t allowed to let it show. This friend hadn’t even had a name, only ever being called “The girl”. Still she had been the most important person to mankind ever.

The lonesome woman by the tree had just banished that girl from a world in desperate need of her.

“May you be happy, my friend,” she prayed.

A loud thump and a yelp from the other side of the tree startled the woman out of her skin. She had never heard such a loud sound in years, but she did recognize the sound of a groaning voice and circled the tree.

“What? What happened? Where am I? I thought I was in a mpff…”

Her heart was racing. A pair of black eyes looked up at her from above her gloved hands covering a loud mouth. She overlooked the person quickly. It was a man who would get his skin burnt off if he stayed uncovered like this for too long. Without thinking she undid her own cloak, keeping one hand over the man’s mouth.

“I am a shaman,” she explained breathlessly. “Try not to make sounds before we get back to the village.”

Releasing the boy’s mouth in order to tie the cloak around him properly she certainly didn’t expect him to talk again with his loud voice.

“Oi! What are you mumpff...!?”

The shaman was scared now. There was no way that went unheard. Damn, she couldn’t see for the sunlight.

Hoping that anything coming for them was slow the shaman pulled out a black piece of cloth from inside her shirt and tied it around her head, pulling the cloth to lay smooth over her eyes so she could see through the material.

“What are you doing? You can’t see like that.”

The shaman turned around to kick the man into silence, but instead her heart almost leaped out of her chest. A mouth had opened up behind the stranger and a sticky, split tongue aimed straight for him. Good for him the shaman had such good reflexes. She and the tongue reached the man at the same time, and the shaman’s black sword cut the tongue off. The mouth made a squeaking sound, opening even more due to the pain, and the shaman took the moment to jump straight into the mouth where she struck her sword through the palate and up through the nose. Now the owner of the mouth definitely roared from the unexpected pain, but the shaman couldn’t move. Her sword was stuck and she couldn’t get it out.

An arm wrapped around her waist and pulled. As much as it surprised her, the shaman wouldn’t let go of her sword’s handle. The monster tried to close its mouth and tossed its head from side to side. Was this the end?

The arm around her waist pulled again, a lot harder, and the shaman, with her precious sword in a white-knuckled grasp, flew backwards, surprisingly far, into a flat chest.

She could see through the cloth for her eyes how the monster, a Rock-beast, stumbled over the edge of the cliff, followed by two others who had climbed up.

Somehow she felt the man was about to say something and quickly covered his mouth. She turned her head around, looked for an ear and breathed as quietly as possible.

“Anything that makes sounds is food.”

 

* * *

 

Zoro awoke with a start at the sound of a thud. The cause was a dusty person in a hooded cloak. They must have fallen from somewhere, at least so was Zoro’s first thought. The fact that the person was staring at the wood of the mast he didn’t take direct notice to.

“Oi,” he said to warn the person he was there. He hadn’t screamed, or even raised his voice, but the person jumped several feet in fright.

The person’s head was covered by the hood and the most of the face was also carefully covered. The eyes were the only thing that could be seen in the face, a pair of light brown orbs surrounded by darkly tanned skin. Said eyes stared at Zoro as if they had never seen another human before. But that’s supposing this really was a human to begin with.

Franky appeared from the storage room where he had just put away his tools.

“What’s this?” he asked when he saw the stranger aboard.

Once again the person jumped high from fright, this time flapping the arms around too so that the dust in the ragged cloths created a small cloud.

“I don’t bff…”

Zoro was abruptly cut off by a pair of gloved, dusty and strong little hands on his mouth and the light brown eyes seemed to desperately try to send an angry message. Zoro would have ripped the hands right off his face and screamed at the stranger if Brook’s humming voice hadn’t made a gentle input in the conversation.

“Zoro-san, if my eyes didn’t fail me, though I don’t have any eyes to fail me, I swear I saw this person fall out of the main mast.”

“Fell out of the mast?” Franky repeated, making the stranger flinch again, tightening their hold of Zoro’s mouth, which in turn made the swordsman lose his patience.

Grabbing the thin wrists to get the hands away from his mouth he yelled straight into the stranger’s face. “Can you stop it!”

The brown eyes widened, like in panic, before they closed tightly.

For a long while nobody spoke as the person just stood there trembling, wrists caught in Zoro’s hands and flinching every time the sea splashed softly against the ship’s haul. The three members of the Mugiwara crew exchanged looks. At long last Zoro decided he’d had enough. Being the brute he was he simply uncovered the head and face of the stranger.

The stranger was probably more surprised, but that didn’t stop Zoro from being so too. Black strands of hair fell out from their confinement over the light brown eyes. The face was darkly tanned, even more so than Zoro’s, with slightly dry skin. Under the left eye a deep scar ran over the cheekbone.

This person looked a lot like Luffy.

 

* * *

 

The shaman stayed in the man’s arms for a while, listening to the sound of monsters feasting on one of their own. She couldn’t calm down. Her heart was pounding like a war drum in her chest and she couldn’t even out her breathing, or stop shaking. She had probably never been as close to death as she had just been.

“You saved my life,” she whispered with awe. The man simply hummed through the hand covering his mouth.

Out of habit the shaman sought out the sun and realized how late it was. It was dangerous to be out during the day, but nobody survived the night.

Quickly turning around in the man’s embrace, keeping her hand on his mouth just in case, the shaman pressed herself to him and held him close, breathing almost soundlessly in his ear.

“I don’t know where you’ve come from, but the monsters of this world will kill us both if we stay out here. Before the sun sets we have to get back to my village, so follow me and move fast. We have quite a distance to travel.”

Luffy was confused. He had no idea of what had happened to him, where his friends were or what was happening right now. All he really could understand was that this strange person with almost every piece of skin covered with rags and a pair of long gloves, a woman he had realized only when he grabbed her, had saved his life, so she was a good person. She was perhaps trying to help him, but in a very strange way. Why had she covered her eyes like that?

She kept breathing in his ear as she pulled that grey cloak of hers tighter around his shoulders and over his head.

“The sun is hot and strong here. You’ll get burnt if you don’t cover up properly.”

She removed her mouth from his ear and pulled the black material over her eyes up in order to glare him straight in the eye. Her eyes were a dark green colour with a hint of gold.

“Remember this though; my protection is only that great. If you stray from my side, I won't be able to save you. If you scream or make any sound at all, I _won’t_ save you. Clear?”

“Mupf,” Luffy tried to answer, but the hand covering his mouth tightened and the girl’s eyes hardened even more. Oh, right; no sounds. He nodded his head.

The woman turned away from him and pulled the cloth back down over her eyes. Just why was she doing that? She grabbed his hand and ran for the cliff and they jumped. Luffy hesitated. He would be just fine because he was a rubber man, but would she be fine too?

The shaman knew she was being reckless, but they didn’t have the luxury of time on their side, so she made a bet. As long as the man kept quiet and she kept a sword at the ready they should be alright.

There was a Rock-beast sitting right beneath them. Good. It would be the perfect distraction for the monsters. The shaman grabbed the stranger man’s shoulder and threw him upwards to temporarily cease his fall while she used the gravity’s full force to bury her black sword in the beast’s neck. It screamed out in surprise and started trashing around.

Pulling the sword out the shaman swiftly turned and jumped to catch the man in the fall. The surrounding Rock-beasts were already moving in the direction of sound, the ones closest to the crying beast opened their mouths used long, sticky tongues as whips. When they realized that didn’t work, they’d just stick their tongues to their meal and tear it apart.

If Luffy hadn’t already seen the wonders of the Grand Line, the sight of moving rocks with mouths and long tongues would probably have surprised him more than it did. He didn’t really have the time to stop and observe the phenomenon more closely because the woman forcefully pulled him along as she ran quite fast with his wrist in one hand and the sword in the other.

That sword. Luffy locked his attention on it as he easily kept up with the woman’s pace. It looked a lot like the sword Zoro had obtained on Thriller Bark. But if this woman had a sword, it meant she’s a swordsman. If she was any good then Zoro might have liked a match against her.

The woman suddenly pulled at his arm so that he came up beside her. She released his wrist and pointed to a small mountain resembling a Swiss cheese, only grey and with even more holes. The woman pushed him in the direction of it and ran behind him instead.

Okay, so that mountain must be their destination.

Luffy jumped over a small rock. At least he thought it was a rock because it was quite small compared to the moving boulders from before. When this little rock too opened a dark red hole lined with white/light grey stumps of teeth and a long, sticky tongue wrapped around his ankle in an instant, Luffy realized it wasn’t a rock, and that he was about to lose his leg.

Once again the strange woman saved him, cut off the tongue and jumped over the squeaking… rock, never losing pace. Actually, she tried to run even faster as more of those large moving boulders seemed to gain life and move towards the sound. Even though Luffy would always be Luffy, he wasn’t so stupid as to not realize what was happening. The woman’s words made some sense now; anything that made sounds was regarded as food by everything around, and there was no telling which rock was an ordinary rock and which was alive.

The mountain was farther away than Luffy had thought. He’d seen it a few minutes ago now and it didn’t seem to be any closer than before, even though they had been running hard all the time. Luffy also noticed the woman constantly glancing towards the sun. Luffy couldn’t, because the sun was a really bright red that burnt his eyes and exposed skin worse than the sun and scorching sands of Alabasta had.

But this wasn’t a desert land. There was no sand and no dunes (thankfully). All Luffy could see around him was a vast, white stretch of uneven rocky ground with dark shadows. Not a single speck of green or brown or anything at all. The sky wasn’t even blue; the sun fully dyed it in red.

A hand touched his back and Luffy turned to see the strange woman in his wake. She seemed to try to nudge him into running even faster. What was going on? Was there a curfew? Or was it the sun? Whatever it was, it was obvious to even Luffy that they were running out of time, so the straw hat boy pushed his legs to run as fast as he could towards their goal. That’s why he didn’t even notice he left the woman too far behind.

 

* * *

 

Zoro, Franky and Brook were all staring at this strange little person who resembled Luffy, but who wasn’t Luffy. The Mugiwara crew’s captain’s eyes were black, his skin wasn’t this tanned and his body was definitely bigger. Thinking about it, Zoro thought this person almost looked like a child in size. But the eyes, no child had eyes with so many shadows.

“We should probably call Luffy-san and the others,” Brook suggested.

“Good idea, Bones. I’ll go,” Franky nodded and walked over to the railing and was just about to jump off when he suddenly stopped, like he hesitated. Very unlike Franky.

“What’s wrong?” Zoro called after him.

“Tide’s turning back,” was all Franky said and turned to look out over the sea. The waves did look a little higher now than before. “Seems like we were just lucky spotting this bridge. It’ll probably disappear soon. I’ll be back with the others as fast as I can.”

And so Franky jumped off the ship and ran into the mountain. Zoro and Brook turned to the stranger whose wide eyes were locked on something in the horizon. Zoro squinted, but couldn’t see anything.

“Where… is this?”

The first words this strange little person said were barely above a whisper.

“You are on Thousand Sunny, our pirate ship,” Zoro answered simply.

Those light eyes looked strangely at him.

“Pirate ship? What’s that?”

 

* * *

 

Franky had fully intended to not stop at anything until he reached his captain, but the sight of a wall of raw diamonds was too much even for that resolve.

“Whoa! What’s all this?!” He stared at the glistering treasure as the wheels in his head turned with clicking sounds. “I can make weapons like nothing from all this!”

He probably would have picked down a few chunks of diamonds if the loud voices of his crewmates hadn’t reminded him of why he was here in the first place. Franky sent a longing glance at the diamonds before his eyes turned to look for his friends. He found them facing an older-looking couple and some kids in front of an impressive oak.

“That tree looks perfect for the new drawing tables Nami and Usopp wanted,” the shipwright thought out loud as he broke into a run. Until he heard Usopp scream.

“Move it! That bastard tree just ate our captain!”

“No! We won’t let you! This tree is the power of our lives!”

Franky closed in on the group, surprised at what was being said.

“We don’t give a damn!” Nami screamed. “Hand over the diamonds… I mean, step aside or you’ll be cut too!”

“The Oak didn’t eat your stupid captain! You’re just here to steal everything we have!” the old man yelled accusingly.

“Don’t be so stingy,” Nami deadpanned.

“If that tree didn’t eat Luffy then where the shit is he?” Sanji growled in warning.

“How should I know? If he ate a devil fruit he must have done something himself!”

“Luffy’s a rubber-man, not a tree-man,” Usopp explained angrily. “Now move the hell away!”

“Oi? What’s going on here?” Franky asked, and only now people seemed to notice he was there.

“Franky! Great! Bring me the cannon and I’ll make toothpicks out of that bloody oak!”

The cyborg stared blankly at Usopp before turning to Robin. She was usually the one you turned to if you wanted an explanation to anything.

“I can’t really tell what happened either,” she answered his glance. “Sanji and the old man over there just kicked Luffy in the direction of that tree. I think he hit right here,” she grew a hand from the trunk and patted the place where she had seen her captain disappear into, but could only feel solid, rough bark. She frowned slightly. “But instead of actually colliding, it looked like Luffy… simply disappeared _into_ the tree.”

“Into the tree?” Franky repeated stupidly.

“Yes,” Robin confirmed.

Two seconds, then the shipwright suddenly remembered why he was here in the first place. “That’s right! You guys must come back to the ship. The tide is turning and the bridge will soon be under water.”

“Yes! Run while you can, you ugly lot!” a young girl with red hair yelled at them from her place behind a blond teen’s back.

“We can’t run!” Chopper protested. “We have to get Luffy back.”

“You said Mugiwara disappeared into that tree, right?” Franky said, and immediately he had everybody’s attention. “Someone who resembles him fell, according to Brook, _out_ of Sunny’s main mast.”

 

* * *

 

The shaman was tired. Her lean body didn’t have a lot of stamina to begin with, and she had used a lot of energy lately. The sleepless nights caused by her wish to send the girl away, the stress of knowing what such a wish would mean to the world, the magic energy it took to open a passage between worlds, the hunting, the panic and adrenaline her price (however he could be that) caused for not knowing the means of survival here.

To put it simply, the shaman didn’t have enough energy to make it all the way to the mountain.

When the man suddenly outran her she felt a slight pang of envy. She swiftly shoved that feeling away with the knowledge that the boy would probably be fine as long as he kept his mouth shut. This world was out of hope anyway, so why did it matter if she fell here? Her legs had started protesting against moving a minute ago, and the sun was falling steadily, mercilessly. It didn’t care, or it didn’t know what would happen when its light was gone.

She stumbled, and her bad luck would of course have her landing heavily on a cub that instantly squeaked loudly.

At first Luffy didn’t react to the sounds, because that strange woman, (Sandman or something) had made the rocks scream more than once already. He threw a glance over his shoulder anyway, only to find he was alone.

Luffy skidded to a stop. Where was that woman? Had she stopped? Was she heading another way?

Questions didn’t help him, so the young pirate captain did the first thing that came to mind; sprinted back the way he had come to look for the only other person he had seen here.

It was the sun, Luffy realized. He couldn’t see because of the light and the landscape was only a blurry mass of different shades of light and deep red. He pulled his hat further down over his eyes and managed to see movement. Moving closer a dark patch suddenly moved and Luffy spotted a bright green head, and two huge mouths opened on either side of the green.

Luffy didn’t think. His fists flew forward and smashed into the rough, rock hard body armour of the beasts and sent them flying with a crashing sound that echoed throughout the area.

Before his arms returned to him, Luffy grabbed the woman and pulled her back towards him.

She probably got the air knocked out of her, but she was with him again at least. Checking her face Luffy realized she was in pain. A little monster was chewing on her leg, even with the black blade sticking out from its body. Sandman grit her teeth and cut the little monster in two.

“Run,” she wheezed. “There’s no more time.”

“You too,” Luffy said lowly but decisively. Lucky for him there was no monster in their direct surroundings.

“I can’t,” the woman whispered. “When the sun goes down and the darkness falls, the Rock-beasts will open their eyes and follow the trail of blood. You have to leave me here.”

“Will you be okay?”

Sandman grinned joylessly at him. “Of course not. Leave me to die or die with me.”

That was it. Luffy had heard enough idiocy from this woman to last a month. He was Monkey D. Luffy, and he’d rather miss a meal than abandon anybody.

The woman gasped when Luffy promptly threw her over his shoulder. She wiggled and struggled but didn’t say anything. In the darkening landscape Luffy looked for a good point he could use to rocket towards that hollow mountain. He couldn’t find a perfect one, but there was a rock a good length in front of him to the left that would do. He took a few steps to his left, carefully calculating the distance. It’s true he knew very little about math, but he knew his own strength.

The shaman hadn’t had the chance or state of mind to notice it before, but when this man bent backwards and breathed in as if he was going to put great effort into something and then threw his arms forward, she had to notice that they stretched.

This man had eaten a devil fruit, just like the girl.

The shaman would probably have screamed at the sudden speed in which she travelled forward if years of keeping her mouth clammed up hadn’t kicked in. They were closing in on the mountain in a horizontal line with unimaginable speed, at least for her. For the man this was probably normal. The world of devil fruit eaters.

Luffy took in air and made his body a balloon for Sandman to land softly on. She was really thin, so even if she could take a fall from quite high drops Luffy didn’t want to take the chance.

They landed, not as close as Luffy had hoped, but Sandman didn’t seem to mind. She pushed him in the direction of the mountain, making no movement to join him in the run, so Luffy picked her up again. He wasn’t gonna leave her and that was that.

The sun disappeared.

Luffy had only a few more yards to run when one of the rocks in front of him suddenly opened a pair of glowing yellow eyes.

The eyes locked on Luffy who just barely managed to dodge the tongue. But only once. It was impossibly fast. Luffy dug his heels into the ground and resisted. In his arms Sandman suddenly wiggled free. The monster’s eyes followed her, but seemed to only have one tongue and couldn’t do anything.

Luffy fell on his butt when Sandman silently cut the beast’s head off first and then the tongue. She was slightly wobbly on her legs, but she still waved at him to follow her. Finally she seemed to understand that Luffy wasn’t going to go anywhere without her. But why did she take the monster’s tongue too?

They entered one of the mountain’s caves and the woman stopped and turned. Luffy thought that she might head back out into the thickening darkness and was about to grab her when he heard how she loudly clapped her hands together and started mumbling.

A glowing circle appeared under Sandman’s feet, one that drew a glowing, fast-moving line towards the cave’s entrance where it split and moved in opposite directions.

It lasted only for a minute, and when the light from the circle faded away, something in Sandman’s hands continued to glow. She wobbled, and Luffy caught her when she fell.

The glow came from a large gold-coloured symbol in her hands.

“It’s safe now,” Sandman said with a sigh, but her voice wasn’t much louder than it had been before. “The magic circle keeps this mountain invisible for anything not human, and it’s sound-proof too.”

“Are you alright?” Luffy asked tensely. She didn’t look okay to him, the faint light made her look a lot older than before.

“Just let me catch my breath. I can’t let the people see me weak.”

“Why not?” Luffy protested. “You live here, right? If it’s so dangerous outside you must take care of each other.”

Sandman grinned, this time in good humour. “You must have come from a great place, then. I’m sorry, but there is no such thing as taking-care-of-someone-else here. That is a duty only I have.”

Luffy stared at this woman. She made absolutely no sense in his ears. Not taking care of someone else? That was the best way of self-destruction!

“Forgive me,” Sandman suddenly said.

“Huh?”

“I wished for my friend to leave this place, and you were paid to me as my price.”

Now Luffy was permanently lost, but Sandman smiled sadly at him. She sighed and started to stand up again.

“Let’s make way to the village… um?” She looked at him uncertainly. “Your name?”

“Oh.” The pirate captain remembered his manners and smiled brightly. “I’m Monkey D. Luffy. Yoroshiku.”

The woman smiled back at him. “I’m Zora.”


	3. A girl without a name

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I've stepped away from my weekly update schedule. This is still a rather short story and it's almost finished. Geez, I'm too active and still it feels like I'm not active enough!

There was only one thing that was completely certain; she was not at home. Guessing wildly because of what Shaman had said and done plus what she could see, the girl was even ready to say this wasn’t the world she was born into.

“What do you mean, ‘what’s a pirate ship’? Are you stupid?”

This man, the girl supposed he was a human, but his voice was so loud and still nothing had tried to eat them yet. Most interesting about this man was his size, though she had noticed his hair was just as green as the shaman’s. The girl didn’t think her hands were big enough to wrap around his wrists, and his hands were easily bigger than the girl's feet. That said something about the rest of him. Yet the one who had left the… pirate ship?… earlier had been bigger still. Remembering one of the shaman’s stories the girl wondered if maybe this man was a giant. He definitely had the body mass to be one in her eyes.

“Ara…” the skeleton suddenly hummed softly. The girl liked its gentle voice, but was repelled by the fact that it could talk and move, as much as she was shocked it was able to drink from the steaming cup in its hand without the liquid dripping right through him and onto the floor. Green floor… “Did you not fall out of Lion-chan’s mast?”

Lion? Mast? The girl looked around. According to the shaman’s stories a lion was an animal, but she couldn’t see any. She had no idea what a mast was. In the end she just gave the skeleton a helplessly blank face. It didn’t give an answer though, since its skull didn’t have much of a face to show expressions with.

“He asked how you came here,” the man, giant or whatever he was, snapped irritably. The girl felt like she had to answer him.

“I was pushed,” she said, because that was all she knew had happened. The shaman had held her, and then pushed her. She’d felt the wood of the dead tree when it hadn’t resisted her, instead welcoming her into its dry, cold embrace. Then there’d been a surge of something the girl couldn’t quite name, something vivid, warm and moving that had every hair on her body stand on end and make her shiver violently. Then it had been over. She had fallen out of the tree’s embrace on the other side. Or so she had thought, but one look at the wood; a rich brown colour where she’d thought she would see the same white and grey of… well, everything that was dead, she knew she was not on the other side of the same tree.

“You were pushed?” the giant, the girl now firmly decided he was, repeated slowly.

She only nodded. After a whole life of talking as little as possible she couldn’t understand the pressing look she was receiving. It surprised her more that the giant didn’t seem to worry when speaking. Was he not afraid?

“Through the mast?” the giant pressed.

Now was probably the time to start talking. If the giant didn’t understand her gestures, then there was no other way of communication. “Mast?”

The giant slapped his forehead before he pointed. The girl followed his finger towards the enormous piece of wood she knew she had come through and had thought was a tree. Only now she realized it wasn’t. It was made of wood, didn’t have bark and sprouted out of the green ground (she’d take a closer look at that once she had studied the “mast”) and up where two perfectly straight branches grew from each side before the “mast” grew out wide, much like a flower but made out of wood instead. That wasn’t all she found above her head though. There was also an enormous piece of fabric tied with rope. Somewhere in her mind she wondered how many sets of cloths could be sewed from that single piece.

But above all that she saw something that confirmed she wasn’t home anymore, as if she hadn’t been sure of it before. The sky was so blue and partly covered with fluffy white clouds. The girl hadn’t seen clouds this big since she was a child, and even then it had only been on one rare occasion.

Because there wasn’t enough water to make clouds in her world.

Zoro studied the girl. Wherever she had come from it had to be a hole in the ground or something. The way she looked at the sky had Zoro wondering if it was the first time she saw it, but that couldn’t be. Her tan was so dark and due to exposure to the sun he could tell from the lighter hue under her chin. But maybe Brook was wrong and this girl hadn’t fallen out of the mast, but out of the mountain they’d docked at. That still didn’t make sense. Brook might not have eyes but his sight was as good as anyone’s.

Shouts and splashes announced the arrival of the rest of the crew and Zoro went to the railing. The tide was over them and the bridge was completely under water. Nami, Usopp and Sanji carrying Chopper waded through it with water to their waists. Franky was last with Robin on his shoulder.

“Where’s Luffy?” Zoro asked as he helped Nami aboard.

“We don’t know. He disappeared into a tree.”

“Into a tree?” the swordsman asked with disbelief as Usopp grabbed his hand. Robin helped herself and Franky and Sanji easily jumped aboard.

“That’s the one,” the cyborg said pointing to the wide-eyed stranger with ruffled black hair and a scar under her left eye. She was staring at them like they were monsters.

“You think she resembles Luffy?” Usopp asked with narrowed eyes.

“She doesn’t smell like Luffy at all,” Chopper complained.

The girl didn’t listen. Among all the noises she heard there was one she knew well. A sound she’d sharpened her ears for since the day she was born.

Water.

All but one of the people who had just come into her sight was wet and dripping with water. But it couldn’t be. There was no way there could be so much water anywhere. Not anywhere safe. Unless…

She turned around. There was a low wall like the one those people right behind her had just jumped over too, and beyond it…

“Is that…?”

From where she stood, a few steps from the low wall and to the horizon, there was nothing but water. A wide, moving blue and grey, shadowed where the clouds hung over it and sparkling where the sun’s rays hit it. The wind hit her face and brought a smell of salt, stinging her eyes that had forgotten how to blink.

How could it be?

The pirates stared at the strangely dressed girl who stared out over the ocean seemingly without breathing. Robin walked up to her and placed a hand on her shoulder, immediately noticing how thin this girl must be under the cloths.

Wide, almost panicking eyes looked up at her.

“It’s the sea…” she whispered.

“Yes?” Robin answered.

The girl’s body started wobbling, as if her bones had turned to jelly, and her eyes rolled back as she fainted.

 

* * *

 

“So what is this place?” Luffy asked as he followed Zora into the depth of the hollow mountain.

“A dying place,” Zora answered simply, as if it was a given. She had taken her cloak back and hung it over her thin shoulders.

The young pirate pouted a bit. This girl wasn’t the least bit fun. Even her raspy voice held a tone of doom. She should work on her view of life, because she was definitely too eager to die.

“You’ll understand soon enough, Luffy. I will tell you some of the stories tonight or tomorrow. First you’ll have to survive the people here.”

“Huh? Survive the people?”

Her voice was barely a whisper. “Yes.”

They entered a great cave in the mountain’s heart, lit by an oddly burning and equally oddly sounding fire in the middle where a few people sat waiting.

“I have returned from hunting,” the shaman called out, not louder than speaking normally for Luffy. “I have food.”

The people around the fire started moving, turned and stood as the shaman and Luffy walked up to them, and their eyes were immediately on the boy with the straw hat.

“Where’s the girl?” Mayor asked sharply.

“Gone, it seems,” the shaman answered quietly as she put down the catches in front of the people whose attention was suddenly torn between the food and the man in the shaman’s company. Luffy looked at the beast tongue. Hadn’t it been longer before?

“Gone where?”

“How should I know? I always act as a shield and keep my back turned to the one I protect. But there are no eyes on my back, Mayor. I can’t tell you how the girl disappeared.”

“So, who is that?”

“A man.”

“I can see that! What’s he doing here? Boy! What have you done to the girl?”

Luffy blinked. “Girl? You mean Zora? Nothing. I saved her from the beasts.”

The blank stares that met him filled the young pirate with a feeling he didn’t like.

“Who is Zora?” the old geezer asked and glared suspiciously at Luffy.

“That’s me, Mayor,” Zora snapped. “I do have a name. You have all simply forgotten it.”

Mayor closed his eyes and shook his bald head. “You don’t deserve a name, Shaman. Just like the girl doesn’t need one! No food for you tonight or tomorrow. Not for your _man_ either.”

“How do you expect me to have the strength to hunt for your food when you won’t let me eat?”

“You have disobeyed me, Shaman. This will teach you where you stand.”

“Oh really,” the shaman rolled her eyes. “Fine then. I won’t eat. And you won’t either, because I’m not going hunting until you give me my share of food.”

“Go to your house.”

Zora snorted and turned. Luffy followed closely behind.

“The man stays here,” Mayor suddenly said.

The pirate captain turned and frowned at the eccentric little man. He didn’t like him. He really didn’t like him. “Like hell,” he answered and kept walking, only to run into a thin back. “Zora?”

Pale green eyes looked at him with surprise, but then Zora smirked approvingly at him, and Luffy was stricken by how much she looked like Zoro.

“Good answer,” she whispered and continued walking.

“I said; the man stays here!” Mayor called out.

“Why should I listen to you?”

“Because I am the only ruler here. I found this hideout. I let you all stay under my roof and I expect obedience from everyone who walk into my home.”

Luffy had never been very good with rulers before, and this bigmouthed man was really pushing it.

“I don’t care who you are. _I_ am a _pirate_ , and I go anywhere I like. So there.”

He didn’t see it, but Zora was smiling widely after that, and the mayor couldn’t gather himself up before the pair reached a small hut and Zora let them inside.

“You did well,” she said.

“Who was that guy?” Luffy asked, still pissed.

“The mayor of this little village, if you can still call it as such,” Zora explained, her voice now hoarser and quieter than before as she knelt down in the darkness of the hut and lit a fire.

Luffy took a closer look. It wasn’t a bonfire. There was nothing that could burn. It was only a flame humming two inches above the ground. There was a circle on the ground though, gold and glowing and looked just like the symbol Zora wore around her neck.

“Cool! Are you a magician?”

“No. I’m just a shaman,” Zora smiled as she pulled something out from a pocket hidden in the cloak. A piece of the beast’s tongue Luffy realized.

“So that’s where it went.”

“Huh?”

“You didn’t give the whole tongue to those people.”

Zora snorted. “’Course not. Mayor is way too predictable. With this, we’ll at least have food for tonight and tomorrow.”

Luffy’s eyes widened as the woman walked up to a small table made of some unknown grey material where a knife lay.

“Two days?!” Luffy exclaimed and Zora was over him in a flash, covering his mouth. She glared hotly at him, seemed to want to say something, but changed her mind.

Her eyes grew softer, sadder. “Forgive me. I’m sure you’re used to have a lot to eat, but there is hardly any food to find here. Please believe me, I’m trying to be generous. If there was only me, I could probably ration the tongue to last four days.”

Luffy felt faint. He was hungry and all there was to eat was a little bit of meat no longer than his forearm!

“Why is there no food? Can’t you eat those monsters outside?”

The woman gave him a troubled look, like she didn’t really want to share the information. “They are edible, albeit a bit dry and though. But nobody’s been able to hunt them for two generations.”

“Why?”

“Their growing number. You can’t kill a Rock-beast without risking a sound, and you’ve seen for yourself how they react to sounds. The cubs are weak, but the people here have grown weaker than even them.”

Luffy frowned. “If it’s so hard to survive here, why don’t you just leave the island?”

She gave him a strange look. “What island?”

 

* * *

 

The girl’s eyes snapped open, but she quickly closed them again, covering them with her hands. It was so bright. What had happened? Something was strange. She could feel it. It was like everything around her was alive. Like there was blood flowing through everything, even her own lifeless cloths.

And she was lying on something incredibly soft. What was that under her head? It wasn’t a log.

“Are you awake?”

An unfamiliar voice. A strangely loud one, not the shaman’s gentle whisper. The girl carefully peeked between her fingers.

Blue eyes looked down on her from a gentle face surrounded by black hair. Such bright colours. The girl couldn’t remember ever seeing a face with such rich colour beside the shaman’s, but even the shaman’s beautiful green hair and eyes paled to gray beside the face looking at her now.

“How are you feeling?”

She swallowed, feeling the lingering moist from the leaves she had eaten earlier wet her dry throat, and still couldn’t manage a word, so she only nodded, hoping the blue eyes would give her some space.

The blue eyes belonged to a woman the girl realized when the person sat back a moment before she stood and left.

The air felt heavy to breathe. Not because of dust or dryness. There were sounds in the air she had never heard before. And moist. The girl was certain she’d never breathed air that was so… _alive_ before. It was too hard to understand, to comprehend. The girl only knew one thing; she wasn’t home. This was somewhere else. It hadn’t been a dream. The shaman had sent her away.

_“You and I share the same responsibility of being the hope of the last humans. That’s why we’ve both given up on our dreams, but I wish for at least you to be able to find yours.”_

The girl frowned. The shaman. What had she done? Why? The two of them were the last hope. After them was nothing. After her there’d be nothing. The shaman couldn’t fight _it_. The girl had never even involved her in the fight. The shaman was doing everything she could for the people already.

‘What dreams?’ the girl thought angrily. ‘There are none. Don’t assume things on your own!’ “Zora!”

“Ojou-san?”

The girl kept her eyes covered. She couldn’t accept it. She couldn’t be here. Her world needed her. Zora had enough on her shoulders with the hunting, the people always crying and complaining even though Zora tried to give them something to look forward to by telling stories in the evenings. Zora did all that and got treated like shit by the mayor.

That foolish old man who thought he was mankind’s saviour!

A gentle hand grabbed her wrist and pulled her hand away from her eyes. The girl looked at the hand. It didn’t wear a glove. The skin was smooth and the nails pretty. She had never seen such a beautiful hand before.

“Here. I thought you might be thirsty.”

‘Thirsty?’

The girl sat straight and felt the world spin and rock around her, but couldn’t lie back down. The woman with the black hair was holding a glass and there was water in it. A full day’s share of water.

“Is it okay?” she asked, whispering.

The woman with the black hair and blue eyes smiled. Her face was so smooth and her cheeks full. “Of course. It’s only water.”

Only water. The girl accepted the glass and looked at its contents. The water was so clear she could see her own hands holding the glass and her… the cover over her legs. She knew what glass was; it was one of very few things that could still be created in her world, but fabric like the blanket over her body; that only existed in the stories now.

Only water the blue eyed woman had said.

“Don’t you need it for yourselves?”

Those clear blue eyes blinked with surprise. “It’s only water,” the woman repeated. “You can drink it.”

Looking at the clear liquid the girl took a careful sip.

It was cool. She shivered. Another mouthful. It was so cold she could feel the chill throughout her thin body. She handed the glass back. She couldn’t drink anymore of it. Her body didn’t have any fat at all to keep warmth in so she pulled her cloak tighter around her.

Robin looked at the strange girl. Something was definitely off with her.

Chopper had watched from his working bench. The girl was in quite a bad shape and her reaction to the water worried the little doctor. The medicine he was making for the moment was for her liver. Her smell told him that her liver was in a very bad condition. The reindeer wanted to take a few blood samples but didn’t dare to. She was faint enough without losing any blood, not even the small amount he needed to check her blood counts. Chopper would ask Sanji to make black pudding for the girl later. But her liver and blood counts were not the only concern. She needed treatment and that alone would keep Chopper busy until the girl was completely fit. Actually, he wouldn’t let her leave before she'd gained twenty-five kilogram. On his doctor pride.

Robin stood. “I’ll go tell the others she’s awake.”

Chopper nodded and continued his work.

The rest of the crew sat around the table in the galley. Sanji was busying himself with cooking something that would probably take up most of his time. The others were not so lucky to have that sort of distraction.

Luffy was gone. He’d disappeared before, many times before but had always left behind a trail easy to follow, or an explosion to lead them to him. Now he was just gone. Robin couldn’t help but notice how deep the wrinkle between Zoro’s eyebrows was, and Nami was making the same face. Franky sat perfectly still with an expression of thinking hard, his sunglasses hiding his eyes from the world. Usopp chewed on his fingers.

Brook just sat there sipping his tea. Then again, he had always been the voice of calm in a storm of panic. Robin just wished she had access to the same well of calmness as Brook. Maybe then her thoughts wouldn’t feel so scattered. She was still amazed at how well she had handled the girl earlier. Part of Robin wanted to just torture her into telling where Luffy had gone.

“She’s awake,” the archaeologist stated and watched how heads turned to her.

“Really? Who is she?” Usopp asked immediately.

“I never got to ask. She’s in quite a state.”

It wasn’t a lie, and it wasn’t calming the nerves of the crew.

Zoro had a feeling he couldn’t quite shrug off; foreboding. Dread. It felt like when that girl had fallen out of the mast something had started moving, but it was impossible to say what that something could be. Zoro wasn’t superstitious, he only believed in his own instincts and luck. Fate if you wish. Things like sensing misfortune or shaking incidents and worrying wasn’t on Zoro’s plate. Luffy’s favourite quote was “take the hardships as they come” after all, and Zoro had quickly adapted to that. But Luffy was gone now, and dread was all he’d left behind in the swordsman.

Nami wasn’t faring any better. Luffy was strong enough to fend for himself, but he also attracted trouble like a magnet, and he tended to stick to them until they were solved. In short; if Luffy had gotten himself into trouble, which he doubtlessly had, he’d not be back today. Probably not by tomorrow either.

Sanji carefully chopped a carrot into exactly same size slices, all the while wondering what the heck he was doing. Luffy was gone, and no matter what Sanji thought of his walking stomach for a captain it chilled him to know said captain was gone, and that he was the cause. Sanji had been the one to kick. The crew had yet to turn the blame on him but Sanji was still waiting. Shit, he was already blaming himself. But kicking Luffy into wood wasn’t something that hadn’t happened before. Franky got mad every second time he had to fix the holes after the captain’s unnumbered attempted kitchen raids. Why had it gone so wrong this time?

Usopp wrung his hands, going over the incident over and over again in his head. He saw Sanji and that old man kick Luffy in the head, Sanji kicking just beside the left eye and the old man hit the jaw. Luffy had gone airborne, his body relaxed like always or he wouldn’t have been flying. Then he’d hit the tree and been gone. Or… maybe he _hadn’t_ hit the tree. No matter what Luffy touched or where he went he left a mark behind. The tree had no sign anything had hit it, so maybe Luffy had disappeared the millisecond before he hit the trunk. But Robin had grown a hand and patted the trunk and she was still here. Usopp chewed on his fingers. This didn’t take him anywhere. Even if he figured out what exactly had happened, how were they going to get Luffy back?

Brook sipped his tea and Usopp felt like cracking his blank-faced skull open, more than it already was.

Chopper suddenly opened the door and came in, the girl close behind.

“Who are you? What’s your name?” Nami asked.

“I don’t have a name,” the girl whispered. “I am a tool, the last hope. The mayor said tools don’t need names.”

“No name?” Usopp asked with disbelief. “Your parents didn’t name you?”

“I wouldn’t know,” was the quiet answer.

Zoro lifted an eyebrow. This girl’s words hinted at a harsh life, and her body confirmed it, but he decided to ignore it for now.

“So where is our Captain?”

Light brown eyes looked at him. They seemed to be darker now than before.

“Where I should be. I must find a way back, or my world is doomed.”

“What do you mean?” Robin asked curiously.

The girl’s face became grim. “Only I can find water.” She seemed to want to say something, but apparently decided against it. “You have a beautiful sea,” she said instead.

“The sea?” Usopp squeaked in absolute disbelief. “What does the sea have to do with anything?! Where the hell is Luffy? Where’ve you hidden him? Why’d he disappear into a tree trunk? Answer me!”

Those brown eyes bore into them all. There were fear in them, and maybe a little resentment, but mostly there was dread.

“In my world the sea was stolen, and it released the Sea Devil that only I can fight.”


	4. From a world without a sea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ruffled shows the Straw-Hat pirates the way into the mountain in hopes of finding a way home.  
> Luffy learns about the world he's landed in, and plans are made.

It had taken some time, and a lot of stopping Luffy from screaming, but at long last, Zora was finally completely drained and as asleep anyone can be without being dead. Because she lay so still beside him Luffy had to check if she was still breathing. He was still full of question marks and dying to straighten them out. Zora had had to promise to tell him everything the next day after she’d had some rest. But there was only one bed in her little home, and that could hardly even be called a bed. It was only a mat and a small cover. Zora had started to shake dust from her cloak and had reached out to hang it on some hook on the wall when she’d looked to the bed and decided her cloak would do for her while Luffy could take the blanket.

Luffy now lay on Zora’s mat-bed with the woman pressed tightly against his chest, sharing the cloak, blanket and body heat. The temperature had dropped without Luffy’s attention, but now he was kind of grateful for the woman’s closeness. The pirate captain had realized before that Zora was thin, but now that he lay still and had nothing else to distract him, he noticed that the woman was hardly more than skin and bones under the layer of cloths she wore.

The pirate sighed, too tired and confused to do more thinking tonight, and so he fell asleep.

 

* * *

 

Luffy’s crew had all become silent as they stared at a young girl who was there with them instead of their crazy captain.

“Your sea was… stolen?” Usopp asked slowly.

The girl nodded in confirmation.

“How?”

“A devil fruit user.”

Robin frowned in confusion. “The sea covers most of the world save for the Red Line and the islands. No matter what, _stealing_ the sea is impossible, especially for devil fruit users.”

“I heard so,” the girl nodded.

Sanji decided to pull out a chair and invite the girl to sit. “It sounds like you have a lot to tell us, so please take a seat,” the cook said with a gentle tone.

The girl gave him a weird look, glanced at the empty chair first and then studied the pirates to figure out how to “take a seat” on it. She had never seen a chair before.

It was comfortable! Just like the bed earlier it was so comfortable she could just snuggle up in it and fall asleep. She probably would if she had the time.

Chopper stared at the newcomer with his mouth open. In his little world there was Luffy and the crew who were his best friends and he loved dearly all the time and Sunny was their home. Outside of that were the adventures they all lived for. It was always exciting and scary at the same time to find a new island. The islands though were quite a small part of Chopper’s everyday life. Everything else was the sea. Water and more water going on and on without an end. And stealing, Chopper knew, meant taking something for themselves and/or hiding it. This was where the reindeer’s mind short circuited.

“Is someone hiding the sea somewhere?” he asked, but the girl shook her head.

“It was two hundred years ago,” the girl whispered.

Usopp narrowed his eyes at her. “You’ve lived without a sea for two hundred years?”

A nod of confirmation.

The sniper was just about to ask how when Nami interrupted. “Forget about the sea. What happened to our captain? Where is Luffy?!”

“Probably in my world. Most likely dead.”

“What do you mean?” Zoro asked darkly.

“Anything that makes sounds is food for the Rock-beasts.”

Silence. The pirates glanced at each other.

“Luffy can take care of himself,” Zoro stated firmly. “He’s probably the one feeding off the… what did you call them? Rock-beasts?”

The girl said nothing. While she knew little about these people, she could understand that this Luffy person was important to them, but was treated very differently from her. She could save these people the harsh truth.

Robin decided to pick up where they left off. “Can you please start from the beginning? Who are you and how did you come here? I believe that if we know that, we can send you back to your world and have our captain in return.”

The girl looked her deep in the eyes. For some reason the brown orbs seemed even darker now than before. Zoro noticed that too. The girl’s eyes were steadily growing darker.

The girl was just about to open her mouth when the blond man interrupted.

“Please start by giving us your name, lady.”

She looked at him. “I said; I have no name.”

“Huh? Surely you have some sort of name or title. What do your folks call you by?”

“Girl.”

Sanji crooked his visible eyebrow. “Girl? That’s it?”

She nodded.

“Is that what your friends call you too?” Usopp asked.

“I have no friends. Only the shaman.”

The pirates shared looks. This was getting them nowhere. Nami rubbed her forehead.

“Fine. We’ll just call you Ruffled for now. How did you get here?”

The girl looked to Zoro who sighed.

“She said she was pushed.”

Robin turned to him. “Pushed?”

“Through wood,” the girl said.

“Wood? You mean like, pushed into a tree just like we did with Luffy?” Usopp asked and received an affirmative nod. “So if we push you into the same tree Luffy disappeared into, he will come back?”

To this the girl answered by shrugging her shoulders.

“Let’s try it,” Zoro stated and stood.

“Oi! We can’t just throw a lady into a tree like we did Luffy. She’s fragile,” Sanji protested.

“No. Please do,” the girl interfered, her whispering voice strangely enough cutting into Sanji and Zoro’s newest fight like an arrow. “If there is a way for me to get back home, I don’t care how it’s done.”

“You can’t leave yet!” Chopper argued this time. “You’re not fit for travelling. I absolutely forbid!”

The girl’s suddenly ice cold eyes bore into the little doctor. “I’ve no obligation to obey,” she whispered. “I must return.”

“Even if you say so, I’m afraid we’ll have to wait until the next ebb,” Nami sighed.

The girl gave her a look of disbelief.

“It’s not my fault. The bridge is underwater and so is the only safe entrance we know of.”

“What about the other holes in the mountain?” Franky asked.

“That snotty bitch we met inside the mountain told us that only two tunnels are safe to use, and one of them is now underwater.”

“Leave that to me,” the girl whispered confidently.

 

* * *

 

Morning, or so a soft voice told him, but when Luffy opened his eyes all he could see was dark grey. No shapes and hardly even any shadows.

Something moved against his chest, trying to get out of his grasp it seemed and Luffy looked down to see what it was.

Pale green exchanged the grey for a moment before a hand started rubbing his face.

“Your eyes are full of dust. Let go of me now, Luffy. I need to fetch water.”

The boy sat up and tried to rub his eyes, but his hands were about as dusty as his eyes. Where was…? Oh, right. He fell through a tree and ended up in this strange place yesterday. He hoped his nakama were okay. They could take care of themselves, but being a world apart from them didn’t feel good. How was he going to get back? Zora had said something really strange yesterday about a price that was supposedly the reason he was here. He was paid to Zora as a price? A price from whom? For what?

Luffy tried to blink the dust out of his eyes. Where had Zora gone to? Hadn’t she said she would just fetch some water? How long could that take?

He waited some more, but still no Zora. With all the blinking Luffy did his eyes were almost free from dust now and he could make out shapes in the greyness. Why was everything grey? Floor, walls, roof, table, mat, cover, himself. Everything in this room was grey.

Then he noticed something in a corner, something that wasn’t grey. A collection of items it seemed, one of them being a staff with a familiar symbol made of gold at the top.

Luffy stood and went over to the things, examining them curiously. It really was gold, all shaped into the same familiar symbol fastened on different objects. There was the staff, a belt, a headband… one of the things looked just like a wand.

“Nine out of ten blessed items.”

“Huh?”

Luffy turned around to find Zora standing in the doorway. She held up the symbol hanging around her neck. “I have the tenth.”

“Oh. That’s where I’ve seen it before,” Luffy exclaimed, or tried to. His throat was so dry it felt like he hadn’t had a drink for days.

“I’ve fetched today’s ration of water,” Zora continued and put a bucket on the table. “It has to last all day, so don’t drink too much now or we won’t have anything to drink at noon or tonight.”

Luffy once again stared at the half-full bucket of water.

“Ne.”

“Yes?”

“Is this a desert land? Where is all the water?”

The woman sighed and carefully wet a corner of her cloak. “Remember I told you yesterday that there are no oceans in this world?”

“Yes. How can there be no sea? What about adventures?! Adventures!”

Zora smiled at him as she gently wiped the rest of the dust from Luffy’s eyes. “I promised I’d tell you. But not here. Now, drink this and we’ll be on our way to the archives.”

Luffy accepted the mug of water. “What’s in the archives?”

 

* * *

 

Nami didn’t trust Ruffled. Sure, the girl hadn’t done anything suspicious, nor did she seem to be very dangerous. Damn, the girl was so thin she looked like she’d break if anybody touched her. Still, Nami wasn’t like Luffy, she didn’t trust everybody she met.

They had sailed as close to the mountain as possible and Sanji had jumped into one of the caves to Ruffled’s directions. Now the two of them stood in the cave mouth and stared into the depth of it, the girl supporting herself on the wall.

“Well?” Nami called.

“Just a moment, she says,” Sanji answered and turned back to the girl.

She had covered up so that only her eyes were visible, though not even they could be seen now as she had closed them in concentration. Sanji was suspicious, but this was the Grand Line. Other world or not, this girl could very possibly be a devil fruit user.

She opened her eyes and looked at him.

“There is a passage into the heart of the mountain on the other side,” she whispered so quietly Sanji hardly heard her. “In difference to all the other caves, that one has nothing unnatural in it.”

“When you say unnatural, what does it mean?” the cook asked carefully.

“I don’t know. I can only feel my way through the stone, and there are things in it that is not stone, and there are tensions.”

Booby traps Sanji thought and nodded. “All right. How are we supposed to know which cave is the safe passage?”

“I’ll tell you where it is,” the girl promised.

The cook accepted the answer, picked up the girl and jumped back to Sunny. “Nami-san. We must circle the mountain to the other side. Ojou-san said the other safe passage is there.”

The navigator hit the palm of her hand. “Of course. It’s a back door. Franky, take the helm. Chopper and Robin, look out for reefs. Usopp, Zoro, Sanji raise the square and alt sails.”

“Ah, Nami-san is so lovely when she takes command,” Sanji sighed blissfully.

Ruffled sent an odd look after his back as the cook left to fulfil his order, then the ship started to move. The girl would never get used to it, she was sure. Part of her still couldn’t comprehend the fact she was in another world. She couldn’t comprehend the fact she could see the ocean, the great blue, life’s cradle. How often hadn’t she dreamt about it returning to her world? To once again imprison the sea devil under the deepest and darkest parts of ocean from where the monster would never be able to escape.

If that could only happen then life would return to her world, and she would be free.

The ship slowly moved away from the mountain and once out of the reef Nami ordered to raise the main sail to speed up.

The girl didn’t really know what she wanted to watch the most; the ship, the sea or the mountain rising up of it.

The ship was most interesting with all the rope and sails and the construction of it in general. The feel of the fresh wood under her feet and the wooden railing she held on to, it was thrilling and felt more alive than anything the girl had encountered in her life. All of it moved with the sounds of creaks and groans. The girl couldn’t help but love it, even though it scared her just as much.

The sea was a dream. Deep, blue, breathing and stretching as far as the eye could see. The girl knew from the shaman’s stories the sea was full of life and the people living on earth knew more about the moon than about the life underneath the surface of the sea. There were dangerous creatures swimming the great blue, but more than that there was food. Food enough to feed the entire world. Millions of different creatures and animals that could be eaten.

At last there was the mountain. The girl decided she should take a good look at it. Though she had seen almost nothing but stone and rocks all of her life, this mountain was different. It wasn’t grey. Or yes it was, but not all grey. When she tried to see what colour the rocks of mountain had she realized there wasn’t only one colour. There were a hundred; all hues of grey, black, red, orange, white, pink and brown. Where the ocean waves splashed at the cliffs was also beautiful shades of deep or faded green.

The girl turned around to look for somebody to ask. As if called, giant with the green hair that made the girl think of Zora walked up to her.

“Is there vegetation growing in the sea?” she asked.

“Of course there is,” the giant answered and sat on the railing.

The girl returned her gaze to the mountain. So there were green plants growing even under the sea. She had to tell the shaman once she returned back to her own world. The missing books of the archives must have been about underwater vegetation.

“Hey, Ruffled!” Nami called from the alt. “We’re behind the mountain now. Where is the safe passage?”

The girl stood and walked over to where the tangerine-haired woman stood. “I can’t tell unless I touch the mountain,” she whispered to her.

Nami took a step back, not liking the closeness, and the whispering was disturbing. “I get it. Secure the main sail! Robin and Chopper stay in the bow. Franky, take us in.”

There seemed to be more underwater obstacles on this side the girl thought since the dark-haired woman and the furry little animal at the front called out a lot more often and the ship rocked until Ruffled felt sick. However, the other people on the ship stood and walked like their footing wasn’t moving at all, and the girl couldn’t help a prick of envy in her heart.

Nami didn’t like to put Sunny into such dangerous waters, but what choice did she have? She wanted Luffy back. But this side of the mountain was more dangerous than the front. They couldn’t pull Sunny any closer.

“Okay, this is as close as we can get,” she decided when there was still a good distance left to the mountain, but she wouldn’t risk the ship. “Drop the anchor. Franky, can you build a bridge or something that reaches the closest cave?”

“I’m on it, nee-chan.”

The giant man with blue hair and wearing almost nothing (the girl did find it a little alarming, but only because she thought about the scorching sun in her own world) was a fast worker. Ruffled had barely turned to look at him before he started pulling a long piece of many pieces of wood stuck together, and this piece was getting longer under loud bangs from a black… something, the girl couldn’t tell what it was, until the wood became a bridge all the way to the mountain.

Ruffled let out a breath of awe.

“Good work, Franky,” Nami said matter-of-factly. “Your turn, Ruffled. Find the passage and bring me the diamonds.”

The girl gave the bright-haired woman a weird look.

“Just ignore her and go,” Usopp urged and even nudged the girl onto the bridge.

For a moment the girl thought the bridge wouldn’t hold, because she had only ever walked on hard stone before she landed on the ship, but the wood reassured her. It felt strong and alive under her touch, almost demanding her trust. The girl couldn’t argue. In fact she didn’t even have a choice. She had to return to where she belonged and the people here wanted their friend back.

It felt open. That’s the first thing she thought when she left the safety on the ship. Nothing but air surrounded her and the wind played around her. She quickly figured she had to keep a tight hold of her cloak if she didn’t want to be blown off the bridge.

An arm grabbed her around the waist and the girl looked up into the blue eye of Sanji.

“The wind picked up, so we should hurry.”

The girl’s only answer was a nod and a determined look from a pair of dark brown eyes. The cook was a little impressed by this girl. She was hardly more than skin and bones and yet she had enough spirit to be reckless.

They made it to the mountain and the girl placed a hand on the rocks. It took only a second or two before she lifted her head and pointed upwards.

“Okay,” Sanji said and gently patted Ruffle’s shoulder. “Wait here while we fix some rope.”

He started walking back to the ship, looking at Nami and Robin, whose gazes were slowly rising. Strange. All the crewmembers seemed to be following something with their gaze. Something that moved upwards.

Sanji turned and saw Ruffled weren’t where he’d left her. She was way up the mountainside, climbing seemingly only with one hand while her feet moved as if she was walking a staircase. Then she suddenly came to a stop and disappeared behind a cliff, reappearing on the other side and waved at them.

“ _That’s_ where we’re going?” Sanji heard Usopp ask.

“Of course,” Nami nodded. “This island works that way. The main entrance is low and hidden by the tide. The back door is high and hidden by that cliff.”

“How can she climb the mountainside so easily?” Robin asked.

“We can worry about that later,” Nami decided. “Usopp; Rope. You, I, Sanji-kun and Chopper are going in.”

“Urg. Guys, guys. I think I have the deadly can’t-climb-this-mountain disease.”

 

* * *

 

Zora was a magician. It didn’t matter what she called herself, she was a magician in Luffy’s eyes.

After a bite, _one_ bite of that monster tongue that couldn’t even start to quell Luffy’s hunger and Zora had the gall to call breakfast, they had left her little hut and passed the well guarded by a man who looked like a dried up old man to Luffy, yet Zora claimed was one of the strongest men in the village. Luffy had stared at the man who returned his gaze with a mistrusting glare.

“Is that guy keeping all the water to himself?” Luffy asked Zora.

“No. He’s only there to make sure nobody gets more than their ration of water.”

“Aha… So he does keep all the water to himself.”

The woman stifled a laugh. “Yes, you are right in a sense. He takes a drink whenever nobody’s looking. That’s how he’s grown stronger than most here, even me. But Mayor trusts him, so nobody has a say in the matter.”

“Your mayor is a bastard,” Luffy stated.

“So true.”

They arrived at the wall and Luffy could see Zora’s symbol carved into the rock. She placed her hand on the symbol, it started to glow and grow in size, opening a hole in the wall big enough for the two to enter a cave hidden behind it.

“Wow! Zora, you’re so cool!” Luffy loudly voiced his appreciation, and to his pleasure Zora smiled at him.

“I suppose that means I’m good. Thank you, Luffy.”

“For what?”

“The compliment.”

They entered the cave and it closed behind them. At first Luffy got nervous, he’d never been really found of dark places, but Zora started to glow with a gentle light as soon as the opening was fully closed.

The confinement was a bit small and the only thing inside was a shelf carved into the stone wall where some ten or fifteen books with leatherbacks stood in a neat row.

“Our world’s history since before the disappearance of the sea and after,” Zora explained quietly. “My parents and I risked our lives to get these books here so that we would be able to tell the story to the people here, to ease their heavy minds. But about half of the books are missing.”

“Why? Couldn’t you find all of them?” Luffy asked. The books he could care less about, but he didn’t like the grim, hurt face Zora was making.

“We did get them all, but we needed to go two rounds. Father sacrificed himself to make sure mother and I got all the books here, but when we came back some smart head had figured out the paper could be used for soup and most of the books we had left here were gone. Those fools out there ate them!”

For once Luffy didn’t say anything. Something so important you are willing to die for it should never be disgraced no matter the reason, so the pirate captain could understand Zora’s harm.

“Paper doesn’t taste good,” he stated after a long while.

“As long as it’s edible we can eat just about anything. We’d eat each other if morals didn’t keep us from it.”

For the first time in his life Luffy felt his stomach turn in disgust. Zora ignored him and picked down the first book in the line and sat down with it on her crossed legs.

“This book is the most important one,” she said and opened the book to the middle, flipping the pages a bit to find what she was looking for. “Look here.”

Luffy sat down beside her and looked at the picture she pointed at. It looked like an enormous snake with a dragon’s head, or something. There was something strange about the body.

“What’s that?”

“The sea devil,” Zora whispered and turned a few pages back. “Listen. The second year of Lord Dragon of the East Shaman clan’s rule the Lord’s wife Lady Delinda had a vision of the devil locked up at the bottom of the sea to be released. Hearing this Lord Dragon gathered his wife and the eight strongest shamans of the clan to prepare for the coming crisis. According to legend God himself sealed the devil at the bottom of the ocean where he was forever doomed to be weighed down by the salt water and chained to the seabed with holy shackles.

Trusting the legend Lord Dragon and his allied climbed to the top of The Holy Mountain of the Dawn where they would be the closest to God and prayed for three days and three nights for the symbol of the East Shaman clan be blessed to be able to fight the devil from the sea. God heeded the prayers and blessed ten items with the clan’s symbol the shamans carried on them.”

Zora silenced to let Luffy’s brain catch up.

“…What does that mean?” the boy asked after a long while.

“Remember seeing nine items with this symbol in my home?” Zora asked and pointed to the glowing medallion around her neck.

“Hm? Ah. I think so.”

“I am a descendant from one of the ten this story tells about. Lord Dragon and his wife or one of the other shamans is my great great-great-great and some grandparent. This medallion is one of the items God blessed on that mountain.”

“Is that good?” Luffy asked doubtfully, his thoughts on that Enel bastard who’d tried to kill his friends and take the gold bell for himself.

“These symbols are the reason mankind have survived for this long,” Zora explained patiently.

“Oh. So it must have been a real God,” the pirate thought out loud.

Zora gave him a long stare, wondering what he meant, but when Luffy blinked at her in that stupid, oblivious way of his, she decided to drop it and instead skipped to the last few pages of the book, showing another drawn picture.

“See this?”

Luffy looked but couldn’t find anything special. It was only a simple image of ten people on a high cliff and the sea below. “Yes?”

Zora started reading. “Autumn the ninth year of Lord Dragon of the East Shaman clan’s rule the sea began to sink away. Startled by the phenomena Lord Dragon left the island with his trusted and me, leaving his wife and son behind to protect the clan while he set sails and followed the current, fearing this was what Lady Delinda had predicted. The ocean had never before been in such an uproar. As we followed the current we met sea creatures of all kinds trying to swim against it.

Only on the second day of sailing the ship hit the seabed and Lord Dragon ordered us to keep moving by foot.

When we finally arrived to the scene of crime we were shocked to find it was the work of a devil fruit user. He had eaten the Void fruit and used all his power to bring the entire ocean he feared and hated so much into the void. Lord Dragon tried to reason with the man to stop, but the man refused, saying he was doing all the devil fruit users a favour. He said; _When the sea is gone, the world’s devil fruit users will have nothing to fear_.”

“Is he an idiot?” Luffy exclaimed so suddenly Zora jumped. “How can we sail the sea if the sea’s not there?! How are we supposed to go on adventures? How can we be pirates of the sea if there is no sea to pirate on!?”

Instead of covering his loud mouth, Zora gently caressed Luffy’s cheek and smiled at his surprised look. She wished she could touch him without the gloves on, but he would probably be disgusted by her hand.

“You are such a good person, Luffy,” she said gently. “Don’t worry. I will send you home, one way or another, back to your world that still has a sea you can sail on.”

“What about you, Zora? You can come with me.”

She smiled again, an apologetically sad smile. “I can’t. Because I am a shaman of the East Shaman clan, my purpose is to fight the sea devil.”

“No.”

“Eh?”

“You’re not staying here. When you find a way to take me home, you’re coming with me as my nakama.”

And that was that. Luffy had made up his mind and nothing Zora could say or do would make him change it. She seemed to realize it too when she smiled at him again.

“That would be wonderful,” she whispered.

“Good, then it’s settled. What do we do now?”

A gasp for a laugh escaped Zora’s lips. “There is not much to do here. Most of the time I just make sure the shield is fully intact, so that it won’t be too dangerous for me to go out hunting.”

“Can we go hunting?” Luffy asked hopefully. His stomach felt like an empty barrel and it growled loudly in agreement of the idea of food.

“No. You are too dangerous to hunt with and I’m in a fight with Mayor.”

Luffy’s stomach growled again, louder. “But I’m so hungry! I need food! Meat! Lots and lots of meat!”

“Until you learn absolute silence in mouth and movement, I’m not taking you out.”

The pirate opened his mouth to argue, but Zora scowled at him and her words sank in; absolute silence or no food. His mouth snapped closed tightly and gave the woman a stubborn look.

Zora held her ground. “I don’t trust you, but if you manage to keep quiet until tomorrow morning, I’m willing to at least consider it.”

“Really?!”

“ _If_ you keep your _mouth shut_.”

Luffy remembered himself and pressed his lips together again. Zora shook her head with a smile and closed the book. There was another thing she had wanted to read for the boy, but figured it could wait until evening when she would be telling stories to the villagers by the fire anyway. So for now she replaced the book on the shelf.

“Come. I’ll show you the way around the caves here.”

This time Luffy managed to answer with only a nod and he jumped up to follow the shaman out of the confinement.

Zora placed her hand on the wall, letting her own light fade just before it opened.

She froze. In front of her stood the mayor and behind him every single villager. None of them looked happy and the mayor looked especially angry.

“This is your fault, Shaman. You and that intruder. Because of you, the well has dried up. Now we don’t have any water!”


	5. In a world she only dreamt about

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ruffled shows she's not all that meets the eye

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm almost embarrassed at how short this chapter is...

When Nami had eyed the mountainside from the Sunny it had looked like a completely normal mountainside that wind and water had eaten away at since the beginning of time; rough and hard to climb. Now that she was pressed against the cold stone she was suspicious. All the way up to the hidden back door there were nail-like rocks pointing outwards, only a foot broad, and were perfect for climbing on.

Suspicious.

Usopp had gone first, being the more agile one of the group and was already sitting behind the cliff they were heading for, holding the rope Nami, Sanji and Chopper had tied around themselves for security. Sanji climbed closely behind Nami, prepared to catch her would she fall, and Chopper was hanging on to his back for dear life. His hoofs weren’t meant for climbing and his human hands were too big and clumsy.

Right then the little reindeer wished he had fingers like Luffy, fingers that could climb the Drum Mountains.

“Luffy… is he alright?”

“Don’t worry about him, Chopper,” Sanji’s voice broke through the doctor’s depressed thoughts. “He won’t die so easily.”

“Come on, just a little bit more,” Usopp encouraged to his friends as they ascended up to him one careful step a time.

Ready to grab the first hand that reached him, Usopp still dared a quick glance over his shoulder to where Ruffled stood; thin back straight and stiff. It made the liar nervous to look at her.

“Usopp,” Nami called and reached her hand up towards the crew’s sniper who quickly grabbed the hand and pulled her up to the safety of the cave.

Sanji was only a second behind and he put out his cigarette against the cliff before the entrance, Chopper jumping off his back to safe ground.

The girl stood as stiff as a rock herself. Caves meant two things to her; water and Devil Droppings. Those poisonous monsters, chunks of flesh that had once fallen off the main body and started to live and grow limbs and senses. The rock-beasts might be dangerous but normal people had once been able to hunt them. Only a shaman could fight Droppings.

In Ruffled’s silent world it was dangerous to make noise. Droppings rarely developed sight, but a great lot had more than perfect hearing. The girl couldn’t relax because the people in her company were so noisy she thought her heart might beat its way out of her chest from the fright of experience telling her what would most likely happen within the next few seconds.

Still, nothing appeared.

There was a pat on her back and Ruffled’s poor heart almost stopped. Beside her stood a glaring woman with bright hair.

“This is the safe passage to the mountain’s centre, right?” the woman asked dangerously low.

The girl looked away, trying to remember that this wasn’t her world. This world still had a sea. The shaman had told that story many times; when the sea was stolen the sea devil’s prison was gone and he could break the chains. As long as there was still a sea in this world the sea devil would remain a prisoner in its darkest depths, and no Droppings would appear in the caves.

“It… is safe,” she breathed in answer to the bright-haired woman’s question.

Sanji gallantly stepped forward. “Don’t worry, Nami-san. I will go first and disable any nasty traps this cave could throw at us.”

“Are you a shaman?”

The pirates turned around and blinked. The girl’s shoulders shook as she stared at Sanji with wide, glossy brown eyes.

“Shaman?” Sanji repeated surprised.

“The shaman must always go first,” Ruffled said, her voice still only breathed.

The pirates exchanged looks, wondering if any of the others knew what the girl meant.

“What is a shaman?” Chopper voiced their common question, which made Ruffled’s eyes widen and face pale until Sanji reached out a hand in fear of the girl fainting on them.

“No Shaman?!” the girl yelled in her loudest shout yet, which was actually not louder than a low conversional tone. “You can live without a shaman?!”

“Why would we need a shaman?” Nami asked. “We’re pirates remember.”

Ruffled had not understood the concept of pirates, what they (normally) did or was. She thought the people she’d met on that ship belonged to a tribe that called themselves Pirates, and in the girl’s world there lived no tribe without the protection of a shaman. Who preserved the history for these people? Who protected them at night? Who purified their food and water?

Sanji came to the girl’s rescue. “I might not know why you’d need a shaman, but you said yourself this passage is safe, so I will be more than enough to protect you.”

The girl stared at him, half pleading and half disbelieving. She had to admit, this man looked fully capable of protecting the group from anything that wasn’t poisonous Devil Droppings. He was at least one head taller than Zora, who was of respectable height in her village. Then the girl had to remember; this wasn’t her world. Maybe these people had found a way to live without the protection and guidance of a Shaman, even if it sounded absolutely impossible to her.

Swallowing her doubts, the girl gave the tall blond man a nod and he smiled at her. The girl hadn’t thought about it before, being distracted as she was, but perhaps this tall man with hair as golden as the sun and eyes bluer than the sky, was handsome. It was certainly not painful to look at him. If she thought about it, save for the living skeleton, all the pirate people were well-fed and healthy-looking, which was definitely something beautiful in the girl’s eyes, and their colours were so bright it almost hurt to look at them. For someone like the girl who was used to all shades of grey, brown and white, this colourful world was a little frightening, but maybe it was beautiful?

She wasn’t given the time to think as the tall man took the lead on his long legs. The girl followed close behind with the other three short on her heels. She hadn’t lied when she said this was a safe passage, she could bet her life on that, but only that it was safe from the unnatural tensions that filled all the other tunnels and hollows in the mountain. She couldn’t tell if anything living lurked in the darkness.

When they lost the light of the sun however the tall man leading the way held up his hand and with a clicking sound a small flame appeared in it. The girl stared at it with impossibly wide eyes. This man carried light in his hand! Maybe he was a shaman after all, but in this world they called their shaman by a different name. That had to be it.

The thought that she did have a shaman in front of her visibly calmed the girl. Nami’s sharp eyes immediately picked up the change and she exchanged a glance with Usopp who had also noticed the strange girl lose her tense and hesitant composure and move with more confidence. Usopp just shrugged and shook his head; he didn’t know what caused the change. Chopper though saw it as a good sign. Stress wasn’t good for the girl’s body. The little reindeer was still against her pushing herself the way she was, but she was unfortunately more stubborn than Chopper.

In the end the trek through the cave was uneventful, when they exited it though it was way too much for the girl to take in at the time. First of all she was overwhelmed by what she saw; green live vegetation basking in the light reflected from gems in the walls. And if that wasn’t enough, as if the sight of lush green grass and plants that had perished in her world a hundred years ago wasn’t enough; in the middle of this paradise was…

Well, the girl couldn’t believe it was real because… because it was a tree. A real live tree. Tall and proud and green!

She’d seen drawings of trees in the books Shaman would read from in the evenings, but those images were bleak at best compared to reality. The girl had dreamt of grass and water once, and here, right in front of her it seemed her dreams had only been a seed that had suddenly sprouted, had taken solid form in a world that was even more real than the reality she lived in, and it invited her inside to touch and breathe air that smelt so strongly of life she choked.

It was too overwhelming. It was too much at once and she felt lightheaded and dizzy. That’s how Nami and Usopp managed to grab her arms and pull her halfway towards the tree before Ruffled could gather herself enough to notice they were holding her at all. And even after she’d noticed their hold she didn’t have enough breath or strength of mind to be worried about it. The magnificent tree took up her field of vision like a giant God she should worship.

She wanted to be closer to the tree.

She wanted to feel it and become one with it.

Nami and Usopp ran as fast as they could, ignoring Chopper and Sanji’s protests to be careful as well as the questions of the island’s inhabitants that had gathered around one of the houses. They were on a mission to get back their captain, and since Luffy had disappeared into that giant tree while this girl with frighteningly thin arms and seriously strange material of clothing (Usopp had a stray question as to just what her clothes were made of) had come out of the mast of their ship, logically they should get Luffy back if they threw this girl into the same oak.

Ruffled didn’t even resist, Nami noticed with satisfaction as she and Usopp tensed simultaneously and hauled the girl at the oak’s trunk and watched her disappear.

Everything stilled. Everyone stared at the spot where the grey person had just… disappeared into the tree.

“What happened?” Chopper whispered panicky, mostly to himself. Something was wrong. He had seen the girl disappear into the trunk of the tree clear as day, but her smell was still there, mingled with that of the oak’s, and it was growing stronger.

Usopp let out a breath. “Did it work?”

“I can’t believe it actually did,” Nami answered, quite derailed.

“So…” Sanji drawled and distractedly scratched his head, “Luffy’s back on Sunny now, right?”

Usopp gave the cook a strange look. “He should be, right? I mean…”

Whatever Usopp had meant to say it came out as a startled shriek when the ground suddenly started shaking and the roots of the oak broke through the ground. The rest of the oak seemed to shake and pulse as if…

“IT’S ALIVE‼‼”

Small branches on the trunk grew out and sprouted leaves. The entire crown seemed to explode with leaves and something that looked like a green worm or snake covered with leaves dove from the tree’s crown, reaching for the sun before changing direction and coming down to earth. Fast.

Usopp and Chopper were almost at the exit, crying and screaming that the tree had indeed eaten Luffy and now Ruffled too! Sanji chivalry came to Nami’s side and she let him take her into his arms and protect her with his own body. Rather he was hurt than she. Nami wasn’t a monster like Sanji. He could take it, even if he died.

The snake/worm hit the ground in a splash of leaves, grass and dirt and Sanji jumped out of the way for the rise in the ground where the thing obviously started digging through the earth.

“Eh?”

Sanji stopped and stared after the trail the unknown creature left in its wake. Nami was still in his arms telling him to run, and if the cook wasn’t trying to understand what it really was he saw he would have run without question. It’s just… he wasn’t exactly sure of what he saw.

“I’m sorry, Nami-san. Go ahead for a while. I want to take a closer look at that,” he explained and gently nudged the navigator in the direction of the exit.

“What are you gonna do?” Nami demanded, but didn’t stay to get a replay as just behind her the monster, as she was sure it was, jumped over a root and headed straight towards her.

Oh yes, Nami was going ahead alright, and once Sanji joined them on the Sunny again he was gonna get a piece of Nami’s mind, that was for sure.

Sanji however stood still, tense as a bowstring in preparation that it might hurt when the monster passed under him if he was wrong.

The cook felt the soil move under his feet, felt it vibrate rhythmically like a heartbeat, and in an instant the grass and a sprouting oak grew up around him, causing him to stumble a little when the growth was so strong and sudden his footing was thrown off. But he was unharmed.

Because the ground didn’t lift where whatever it was made its way, it was the grass that grew higher!

A devil fruit?

Usopp and Chopper were watching from the safety of the cave they’d come through. They saw Sanji get attacked by the Green Monster, chopping off his legs and eating them!

And then Sanji walked out of the grass, completely safe though seemingly a little bewildered. Nothing to what Usopp was though. Sanji had gotten attacked and wasn’t harmed? What kind of monster was this? Chopper was only relieved the cook wasn’t harmed.

The sniper ignored Nami passing and pressing in behind him with an angry sound and instead concentrated on the head of the trail as it slithered towards the bottom of the valley where he could see a small pound of water.

The trail stopped at the edge, and the monster lifted its head.

A very little head for something that had looked a lot larger before.

The head lifted a little more, bending over the water as if unsure of something.

Such a small… head…?

Distracted Usopp reached for his goggles so he could take a closer look.

Nami had also noticed the pause of the monster’s activity and peered at the bottom of the valley.

Sanji was closer than the others, but he could hardly believe his eyes as he strode over to the figure that had seemed to grow from the edge of the water. A figure with a cape of grass and mint growing through tousles of very dark brown hair.

“Ruffled?!” Sanji exclaimed, not sure if he was relieved or angry to see her. “What happened?”

The girl looked startled, and even more so, she looked different. Sanji would like to say she looked refreshed, and she did in a way. Her skin had adopted a healthier olive hue rather than the leathery sunburn from before. Her grey cloths now had been weaved with fresh, green grass. It also looked like she was filling up her skin a little more. But she also looked feverish. Her eyes were blank and watery, she trembled badly and seemed on the verge of being sick. Filling out her skin was obviously not an entirely good thing either since the skin on her cheeks was chapped.

She tried to say something but it came out as a pained groan and instead she doubled over and threw up a white, watery substance that definitely couldn’t be normal. Sanji remembered Chopper saying the girl was in a bad shape. Of course the little doctor was right. The crew should have paid more attention.

“Come on. Let’s get back to the ship,” Sanji stressed and gathered the gasping girl into his arms.


	6. And a pirate of the sea

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Considering how long it has taken me to write this story, it's progressing fast...

“Now we don’t have any water!”

Zora’s frown only deepened. She’d known this would happen. Without the girl they couldn’t find the water reserves hidden in the depths of the earth. This little fact had probably not registered in the well-guard’s mind and he’d continued to sneak water out of the well to get his unfair fill.

“You will pay for this, intruder. Your flesh will feed our village for days!”

Luffy stood unfazed by the feverish look in the old man’s eyes. He could take the people of this village down just by breathing on them, but Zora still stepped protectively in front of him.

“This _intruder_ , as you call him, is eager to hunt and is fully capable of taking down a full-grown Rock-beast. You can feed on his flesh for a few days, but his strength and skills can feed us all for _years_.”

Mayor looked startled by Zora’s retort. He had expected her to resist and been prepared for any lies she could sprout, but _this_?! A hunter? Well, the intruder looked both strong and healthy like a God, true. But if that was the case he needed the man on his side. The shaman was getting too rebellious and refused to follow orders more often than not.

“Fine. He can go and hunt for food right now then, and you Shaman, will pay for the girl’s disappearance.”

Luffy frowned but didn’t move. First of all he was a pirate and wouldn’t take orders from anyone, and this guy was threatening Zora who was doing everything she could to keep this place safe. Well, the pirate captain had already decided the old fart was a bastard. This was however Zora’s fight and Luffy respected her.

“Not gonna happen,” Zora replied calmly.

“You think you can take the girl without permission and lose her without getting punished for it? You got another thing coming, Shaman,” Mayor hissed.

Zora lifted her gaze to the villagers, saw the hunger and despair in their eyes and made her voice heard above their heads. “Mayor tried to bribe me with water to go out hunting for him and his family only!”

“Lies!” Mayor cried out furiously.

“By controlling the girl he controlled the water and us. But I refused to hunt if it was not for all of you and I’m being punished!”

“Lies!” the mayor croaked again and pointed at the offending woman. “Grab her! Let her taste the whip!”

“There is no water in the well, because Mayor is the one who decides how much water there should be in it.”

The villagers looked at each other unsure. They may be hungry, dry and beyond saving, but they knew who protected them. Yes, Mayor had promised them food in the form of the man that had come back instead of the girl, but the shaman promised that the man could give them more food in the form of Rock-beasts. If that was the case they would soon have armours too. And it was true their mayor’s share was always bigger than theirs. Many children had died this year, but the mayor’s daughter lived.

“What are you waiting for? Capture her!” the mayor hissed at the men by his side.

One of them stepped forward in a manner that convinced both Zora and Luffy he wasn’t going to fulfil the order. He was shorter than Zora too. “Where is the water?” he asked, barely above a whisper. The mayor gaped in shock.

“I’m not sure,” Zora answered truthfully. “I am however certain the girl kept some sort of reservoir underground from which she refilled the well every time it dried up.”

“Can you refill the well?” a woman in the crowd asked.

“I can try,” Zora promised.

The mayor shook with rage. Zora ignored him however and pulled Luffy with her towards the well. It was a narrow hole in the ground, but she was thin enough to slip down with room around her and the medallion would provide her with light. She turned and pressed her body almost flush against Luffy’s. She reached him to just below his eyes, and his shoulders were a little more than an arm broader than Zora’s on both sides. It wouldn’t be as easy for him, and while she trusted he was probably strong enough to hold off against the village she rather not leave him with them.

“The stranger stays _here_ , Shaman,” the mayor warned tightly.

“The stranger is coming with me. Whatever the girl did to refill the well I doubt my strength is enough to do it without her power. With this man at least I’ll have a chance.”

“I’m the mayor of this village, and you will do as I say, Shaman!”

“When the mayor starts making the wrong decisions and act selfishly, according to the old laws of the Shaman tribes that is when a new leader is selected.”

Mayor’s eyes widened with madness. “But this village doesn’t belong to your shaman tribe. It belongs to me.”

“And is under the protection of me and my strength,” Zora countered and was actually surprised by how calm she sounded, despite the fury bubbling inside her chest and clawing at her throat, begging to be set free. She turned and glared coldly at the old man. “You may have found this place that is protected from the sun and is not a cave the Devil Droppings reside in. But even with this, without my magic to hide it from the eyes of the Rock-beasts and the girl to channel water and gas here, this spot you’re so proud of having found would be no different from a cave or open ground.”

The people started to exchange glances and move away from the old, shrivelled up man who stood shaking with rage. But then he slowly relaxed, eyes calculating and cold, and Zora knew he was coming up with a way of revenge against her. But not right now. He was too cunning for that.

“Very well. Go on then. If you say you can refill the well with the help of this… man, please proceed. We shall wait here.”

Zora turned her back to the old mayor, hands on her cursed sword and stared down the well. Sliding down would be easy. Getting back up; not so much. But the shaman was so eager to get out of Mayor's sight she put her usual caution aside. She sat on the edge, pressed her legs against the wall of the well and slid down a little bit further than she had intended and looked up. Luckily Luffy was quick to follow, almost too quick as Zora had to slide further down to avoid the man hitting her.

“Careful,” she whispered up to him, and heard a low giggle and apology from above. Zora couldn’t stop herself from smiling. Luffy was catching on fast.

She relaxed slightly and started to slide down at a steady pace. Luffy followed carefully, trusting other senses but his eyes once the light from above couldn’t reach them anymore. The pirate wasn’t afraid of the dark, but he wasn’t exactly found of it either, especially not coupled with limited space. One of the reasons he loved the ocean was after all the vastness of it. He was worried about Zora too. It was like a feeling in his gut; one he was familiar with but didn’t know how to act on. The feeling was defensiveness over a friend. But how could he protect Zora? She was strong and independent and Luffy highly respected that strength and her, but he had also watched how the people here treated her and knew that strength was something she had been forced to obtain. That’s why he was determined to take her with him once she found a way to send him back to his own world and his crew.

Below him he suddenly heard Zora gasp, and he sensed her move away from under him.

“Zora, are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he heard her breathe carefully and remembered to keep his voice down.

A gentle light spread from what appeared to be a hole in the well wall. Luffy curiously slid down so he was level with the hole where he found Zora sitting in yet another narrow tunnel; this one horizontal.

“What’s this?” the pirate asked with a hint of excitement. A mystery tunnel in a well sounded a lot like an adventure to him.

“I can’t tell for sure, but I suspect this is a means for the girl to refill the well. Come on.”

Zora crawled further in and heard Luffy follow. She untied her cloak and left it in the tunnel mouth, knowing it would just be in the way for both of them if they had to crawl.

Luffy crawled over the cloak, but stopped to rub the material between his fingers.

“Hey Zora, what’s your cloths made of? It feels weird.”

“The only thing we have to make clothes of; our hair.”

Luffy looked up and hurried to follow the guiding light of Zora’s medallion. “Are you serious? You make clothes out of your own hair?”

“Hush,” the shaman hissed sharply. “And yes. Every time someone’s hair grows long enough, we shave our heads and weave it, mostly just adding to or strengthening the things we already wear. I shaved mine about three months ago. Mayor took it to thicken his daughter’s blanket, even though there was another child who needed to mend his cloths.”

The thought of making cloths and blankets out of your own hair grossed Luffy out, but it was rather creative too in a weird sort of way. It still made the pirate appreciate his own, cotton shirt, comfortable shorts and soft underwear. Just imagine what hairy underwear would be like!

“Doesn’t it feel weird?” he unintentionally said out loud, meaning the underwear.

“I have never worn anything else, so I suppose the answer is no.”

Definitely weird Luffy thought, and then bumped his head into Zora’s bony behind. “Zora?”

When she didn’t respond and didn’t move, Luffy stretched his neck around her to see what was up.

Zora was frozen. She had reached the end of the tunnel and arrived in an enormous underground cave where the light from her medallion reflected in gentle ripples of a massive reservoir of water. There was so much! Zora had never seen so much water in her life, not even in her dreams! And the fact that the girl had not shared this with the village flashed as a bright red warning before the shaman’s eyes. The mayor couldn’t know about this. There was no way he knew. If he had known he would never have attempted that coup before, and he wouldn’t need the girl to channel water and gas. The gas was running naturally in the earth and the channels were permanent. But the water was limited. Why? Why had the girl kept all this water hidden?

“It’s a lake!”

At the sound of Luffy’s voice in her ear Zora almost had a heart-attack. She quickly grabbed the man’s face with a strength that put an eagle’s claws to shame and would definitely have been painful had Luffy not been made of rubber.

“Be. Quiet.”

Luffy nodded, warned by the look in the shaman’s eyes.

Zora eased her grip, but didn’t let go. She stared out over the mass of water, the light from her medallion reflecting on the ripples, and tried to understand what she was seeing and why.

Ripples on the water…

Zora’s heart shook with fear as she realized there were ripples on the water. Water was the most nervous of the elements and moved with the slightest disturbance. They were underground where there shouldn’t be any sort of disturbance, and there was none where she could _see_ it.

The shaman gulped around the thick lump that had formed in her throat and risked more light.

Luffy’s eyes widened when the medallion around Zora’s neck grew brighter. The light was still gentle and yet managed to illuminate the entire cave. It was really cool. Especially when it became apparent that the water was perfectly clear and you could see the bottom.

Or they might have been able to see the bottom if it wasn’t for the giant sea-snake/dragon-like creature that was curled up amongst the rocks down there, its breaths through its gills causing ripples on the surface. The head was resting peacefully against the wall farthest away from where Zora and Luffy were. Its colour was impossible to make out in the light and the blue of the water, but it had scales it appeared. Scales with distorted, grimacing faces and limbs of sorts sticking out in odd angles every here and there.

And in the middle of its ringlets was an egg.

Zora instantly killed the light, and wished she could do the same with the image of the nightmare she had just seen. The walls around the giant monster had holes big enough for the creature to move through, so this wasn’t the only place it resided in. Of course, something of this size needed food, and the human village located _right above its head_ … would do… for the baby…

Zora knew she should be frightened. Knew she should be fighting panic. But for some reason she felt perfectly calm. Maybe she had gone into shock. She’d never been in shock before so she wasn’t sure.

“I’m going down to kill the egg.”

“What?”

Luffy’s voice was oddly sharp in her ear, even muffled by her hand, and Zora found comfort in knowing he was there.

“Remember the story I told you? When the sea was stolen the sea devil’s prison was gone and it could break free from the chains. What you just saw was the sea devil in the flesh.”

“That was the devil of the sea?” Luffy found that rather hard to believe. It had been huge, sure, and its body had faces in it and scrawny arms and legs sticking out, but Luffy had seen a lot scarier things in his life. One of them was Nami when Angry.

“The sea devil with an egg,” Zora clarified. “If that egg is allowed to live this world will have _two_ devils in it. What do you think will happen then?

“…there will be two sea devils?” Luffy asked tentatively.

“And no other life left. I have no idea what that thing’s been feeding on for all this time, but there is a chance our village was not the only one in the world that survived for this long. There was after all more than one shaman tribe. Still, it fell upon my tribe, my family and ultimately to me to rid the world of this monster. Killing the egg is a good way to start.”

Looking at the woman’s face Luffy got a strange feeling in his gut. It was akin to excitement, but it was cold. “The mother will be furious,” he warned.

“I hope so,” Zora breathed.


	7. In a world that's lost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ruffled's powers revealed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for some perhaps disturbing descriptions of pulling out weeds from a live body. I tried to keep it as neutral as possible, but skip the first part if you're sensitive.

So throwing Ruffled into the oak was a failure, and now they were back on square one. The pirates had rushed back to the Sunny and straight to Chopper’s infirmary with the unconscious girl. Robin and Nami were helping the little reindeer pick grass, mint and sprouting oaks from her body. They had sailed out of the reefs and Nami was dead set against going back. She had managed to peel a few diamonds from the wall she’d hidden behind and was at least a little satisfied.

Chopper was in a state of alarm. They had decidedly come to the conclusion the nameless girl had eaten a devil fruit, but it was different from anything Chopper had ever seen. The grass and oaks seemed to grow with her body as their soil and the roots were bloody when they picked them out. At first it had seemed like a good idea to leave the plants, but then they started to wither and the colour slowly drained from the girl’s face along with the blood that seemed to have filled it up earlier, so now they were picking out the plants as fast and carefully as they could. Chopper tried not to breathe either. The girl smelled too much like blood and puss mixed with soil and something burnt.

When they finally removed the last sprouting oak from her big toe, taking the nail out with it, Chopper needed a moment to calm down and mentally prepare himself for the sight he knew awaited him underneath those strange cloths.

“Okay. We should remove her shirt first. Robin, will you hold her up for me?”

The historian grew hands under Ruffled’s shoulders and lower back and pushed her up. She knew she would still have to feel the bones sticking out and the unnerving material of the cloths, but it felt a little better not to touch her with her real hands.

Chopper gulped, held his breath and removed the top.

Nami slapped a hand over her mouth and quickly turned away. “I’m sorry, I can’t do this. I’m leaving.”

Nobody stopped her. Robin actually had half a mind to follow her friend out. What Ruffled hid under her cloths was dried up skin, chapped and bloody from the sudden fill of water she’d gotten, puss rather than blood seeping out of the wounds. Right underneath the skin they could see the bones, and her abdomen was sunken in dangerously deep.

“She’s not used drink and eat, her body can’t handle it,” Chopper sobbed. “We’ve given her too much water and then on the island I think she must have eaten everything she saw after she was thrown into the tree. She could have eaten herself to death.”

“So what should we do?” Robin asked barely above a whisper.

“We must clean her first. I need warm water and the cleaning rags in the bottom drawer to the left in my desk. After that we must be careful with how much food we give her and increase the amount gradually.”

Robin nodded and went to get the towels. Chopper’s words made sense, and reminded her of a story she heard once; a man from a poor family became a famous actor, and to suddenly have food come to him at his whim he grew fatter and fatter until his stomach burst from the forced expansion because the man simply had no breaks and ate until there was no more food in his sight. If Luffy wasn’t a rubber man Robin feared that would have been her captain’s fate as well, considering his appetite…

 

* * *

 

Out on the deck Nami stood and glared at the mountain, fingers drumming against the railing as she tried to figure out what to do next and forget the sight of Ruffled’s body. She had to admit; ever since she’d joined this mad crew with its eccentric captain she’d had moments when she hated it. Luffy and his whims would be their death one day and they all knew it… and accepted it. They were pirates after all with all it included. But even though she disagreed with the rubber man more than half of the time, following his orders was easy. They were always clear and straight to the point. Now Luffy was gone, and the responsibility to lead the crew now fell on Nami. Zoro might be the first mate, and normally Nami would at least hear his advice, but right now Zoro was as much at a lost as any of them.

The navigator inhaled deeply.

“Nami-san.”

She turned to acknowledge Sanji, hoping he would give her something that would help her figure out what to do next. She let the air out as she looked back at the island. “The log is set, we don’t need to refill our stocks now that Luffy isn’t here, everyone’s aboard and I don’t know if it’s worth waiting around or not.”

“I think not, Nami-san,” Sanji shared his thought and puffed out smoke away from the navigator’s direction. “Whatever happened to Luffy I don’t think it has anything to do with this island or that oak. The girl said she was ‘pushed through wood’ didn’t she?”

“I still can’t make sense of that,” Nami admitted and swallowed as the glimpse of Ruffled’s corpse-like body forced its way to her consciousness.

“Me neither, but Brook said Ruffled fell out of the main mast. We also thought that Luffy would come back that way if we threw Ruffled into the oak of that island. Whatever powers are at work here, don’t you think it’s logical to believe Luffy will come back to us via Sunny if _wood_ is the actual answer?”

It was farfetched and roundabout, but it was also the only explanation they had for now. Nami bit her lip and sent a last glare at the mountain before she made up her mind.

“Okay. We’ll rest here for tonight and leave first thing in the morning.”

“Hai, Nami-san!”

 

* * *

 

The girl slept fitfully. She felt sick even in her feverish dreams. She saw shadows of memories mixed with words she forgot as soon as she heard them. She saw the Sea Devil wrapped around its newly laid egg as the corpses its body had consumed during the millennia of imprisonment under the sea wiggle under the scales, eventually coming lose and becoming Devil Droppings that haunted the dark caves of the world. The Shaman’s voice told the story of how the Sea Devil had consumed corpses of sailors, fishes, whales and anything else that had been alive, drowned and fallen to the ocean floor.

In her dreams she ate grass that tasted so strongly she choked. Her body absorbed water and seeds that started to grow and sprout painfully, their roots digging into her veins to suck her blood out.

This world’s earth and plants still knew about water and took it for granted. They didn’t have to preserve every drop to last as long as possible.

It was with a need to vomit the girl opened her eyes to a blurred image of… well she wasn’t sure what it was but she was laying in a twisted position with the lower half her body face up and her head face down over an edge. Unbeknownst to herself she’d been gagging in her sleep and Chopper had turned her over by the shoulder with one big hand and held a bucket with his other, holding it carefully under the girl’s head. It was just that she couldn’t throw up. Her body had since birth learnt how scarce food was so throwing up was not an option. She might gag and feel something come up, but she’d always swallow it back down.

She swallowed thickly and took a few deep breaths, calming her upset stomach. She thought she knew what had happened and why she felt like this, but she wasn’t sure. Heck, the girl wasn’t even sure where reality had ended and dream started.

“Are you okay?” a gentle voice asked, yet the volume still made the girl flinch in surprise.

“I… I’m… okay…” she breathed. “What happened?”

“I’m not sure,” Chopper said as quietly as he could. It appeared that the quieter her surroundings were the calmer Ruffled felt. “Have you eaten a devil fruit?”

Ruffled took a moment to progress the question. She had never been asked the question before so it took a while to understand, but once she did she nodded. “The Earth fruit, Shaman told me. My body is Earth, a garden where the plants I’ve eaten grow, and so I am one with Nature.”

That was a… rather poetic way to put it, Chopper thought. It did explain why those oak sprouts and grass rooted in her body… somewhat.

“You’re not used to eat,” the little doctor explained. “So when you… were on that island, didn’t you eat pretty much everything you saw?”

The girl only nodded.

“How often do you normally eat?”

She thought for a moment. “One meal… every second day… sort of. And my ration of water.”

“You get to drink water every day?” Chopper asked, relieved the girl had at least that much.

“Not really. The water ration has to last a week per person.”

The reindeer’s face fell. Meagre barely began to describe this girl’s life. No wonder she was in such a state if she hadn’t even been able to drink water every day.

“We’ll increase your meals slowly to get your body used to food and more water.”

“No,” the girl protested. “I need to go back to my own world as soon as I can.”

Chopper frowned sadly. This girl was too stubborn for her own good.

“A-anyway, we left that island an hour ago. The people there didn’t know anything about what happened to Luffy, and because you… fell out of the mast, we don’t think that tree has anything to do with the case.”

The girl lay still and listened, thinking obviously with the way her eyebrows knitted together. “As long as there’s wood,” she said at length. “Because I was pushed through wood.”

“How did that happen?” the reindeer asked curiously. “I mean, all you’ve really told us is that you were pushed.”

Brown eyes opened and stared blankly at the ceiling. “When the shaman goes out to hunt, I sometimes go with her, even though Mayor says I can’t. Sitting still in that place though, I slowly go mad. So that day, I begged shaman to take me out hunting.”

She silenced for a moment. The shaman hadn’t put up much of a fight. She never did against anyone but the mayor. Why would she? The hunts were just a means to keep her occupied, because in reality she had lost hope too. Mayor’s daughter was the last child to be born, and despite the old guy’s claims his daughter was their future she would stay the last child born in their world. The women couldn’t carry children anymore and men couldn’t produce seed. And really, Mayor’s claims about his daughter were only so he could get his greedy hands on half of everything the villagers had to share. Nobody had the breath to fight back, and so the old monster was slowly eating out the village he claimed he protected.

The reality was the opposite. The girl wondered if the shaman had figured it out yet. Shaman was sharp, so the girl had little doubt that if the village’s real protector hadn’t found the Sea Devil yet she soon would. So why try to survive when they were doomed ever since they moved into that hollow mountain?

“Ruffled?”

She opened her eyes and glanced at the furry animal beside her. Blushing slightly she realized she’d left him hanging. “Where was I?”

“The shaman took you out to hunt.”

The girl shrugged. “Nothing was out of the ordinary. We went to the hill where there is a cave, went inside, found water and the plant that grew there. A Devil Dropping found us, but shaman killed and purified it without getting injured this time. We were lucky.”

Chopper stared at his patient. “Devil dropping?” he asked slowly. He hoped that didn’t mean what he thought it meant. Ruffled’s people couldn’t be so desperate they actually ate shit… right?

“During its years of imprisonment under the sea, the Sea Devil’s body absorbed the corpses that reached it. Now, free from the prison, those corpses fall away from the main body and come alive. The shaman’s magic is the only thing that can kill them and purify the meat to make it edible.”

The doctor heaved a quiet sigh of relief. He didn’t understand all the details, but at least the girl hadn’t grown up eating… droppings.

“We made it out of the cave… There was a tree, dead like the rest of our world, like a piece of bone from the time our old world still had life.”

The girl’s voice was rapidly growing hoarse and Chopper picked up a glass of water with a straw to let the girl drink. She sucked in a mouthful, grimaced in pain as she swallowed too much and the water almost logged in her throat. The small doctor stroked the girl’s throat, massaging the muscles and stimulating the reflex to swallow.

“You must be careful. Because of the small amount of food your body is adapted to survive on your stomach will burst open and kill you if you eat too much. Your instincts though will tell you to eat everything you can because survival is dependent on food.”

“I… only understood the careful part,” Ruffled coughed.

“I said if you ever eat everything you see again you’ll die,” Chopper deadpanned.

The girl stared at the ceiling for a long time, trying to absorb the information. At long last she turned back to the animal. “Why will I die?”

Chopper crossed his arms and closed his eyes, considering the problem he appeared to have come across. It soon occurred to him though that the term “leftovers” had probably long since vanished from any language of Ruffled’s world. So of course any knowledge about food other than the fact they needed it to survive should also have perished.

In the end Chopper nodded to himself and held up a hoof. “The stomach in your body where all your food goes to is this big,” he explained. “And just like your hand it can only hold so much. So if you keep stuffing food into your stomach…” Chopper opened his hoof with a comical sound effect of something blowing up.

The girl stared with wide eyes that were now a rich, earthly brown.

Right then Chopper heard the way too familiar explosion of cannons seconds before the ship rocked violently as the shot just barely missed them. “Warning shots” Robin called them.

The girl had jumped and pressed herself against the wall, eyes wide with a panic.

Chopper had to remember this girl was from a world where conflicts between two opposing sides were a thing of history, and he was about to try to explain what was going on when Ruffled pinched her eyes closed and melted into the wood of the wall.

The girl’s one and only thought was that the Sea Devil was attacking, and that was _her_ fight and hers alone. So when she jumped out of the wood into open air she expected to see the hideous creature of nightmares.

She didn’t.

“Oi, Ruffled! What are you doing up here?!” the man with the blue eyes yelled from somewhere beside her.

Black balls were flying over their heads and eruptions of water surrounded the vessel. The air smelled of wind and salt and water and wood and fire and something the girl was only vaguely familiar with.

“Damn those marines!” The giant with the blue hair growled. “Hold on and prepare to burst!”

The girl rushed forward, in the opposite direction of where the vessel was headed, and stared at the objects that were making the noises and that spat the black balls at them.

Balls made of something she recognized.

“Franky, wait! Ruffled is in the alt!” someone screamed behind her.

She grew her feet into the wood of the vessel to keep steady. She wasn’t thinking anymore, only acting on instincts that said “protect” and listened to the voice of her inhuman power that tickled through her veins. It felt almost like fear, only it wasn’t. The girl just wasn’t familiar with the emotion, and either way she didn’t have the spare thought to think about it.

Both her arms became branches of wood that she grew out to touch the black balls.

It was metal.

She immediately absorbed the material and her arms changed from wood into metal, and she forged the substance at will.

More balls were in the air and Ruffled stretched her fingers like tentacles and picked them like apples. Her fingers and arms thickened a little bit for every metal ball she absorbed until she felt like she was about to break under the weight. But the wood under Ruffled’s feet was strong and alive and she copied the wood into her skeleton, securing herself by turning muscles into metal.

It helped, but the girl wasn’t used to pushing her limits so far. Her body was too weak. Still, she couldn’t stop. The voice inside screaming ‘danger, protect the people’ was still loud and clear and overwhelming.

The pursuers stopped firing. It seemed they had realized something really odd was happening, but they were closing in since all the weight Ruffled had collected together with the metal balls was weighting down Sunny’s rear.

“Damn! Franky, we have to burst!” Nami cried furiously.

“Bad idea,” the shipwright shook his head. “From this angle we’d go high but not far and we don’t have enough cola to use the burst twice.”

“All because of that girl!” the navigator hissed and turned. “Sanji-kun, Zoro, get Ruffled off the alt so we can straighten up the ship!”

None of the men moved. Ruffled had connected her long arms above her head, creating a circle that she carefully lifted higher so that she looked like a living loophole.

“She’s got something planned, Nami-san,” Sanji told the navigator, but he sounded unsure. It would be really bad if the marines caught up to them, Ruffled came from a different world without a sea so there was no way she would know what the marines were or stood for.

“It’s a blade!” Zoro gasped, staring at the ring high above them and the sun reflecting off its new edge. The marines were catching up, and Zoro slowly realized what the plan was; Ruffled was going to bring her round blade down on the marines.

When the marine ships were close enough, the circle Ruffled had created grew wider still, and thinner. For her inner eye she saw the symbol Shaman carried around her neck. The circle with six teeth pointing to its centre. Without her notice, the circle she was holding up adopted the image as it started to fall over the three battleships.

The circle hit the bow and alt of the nearest ship, the circle’s teeth cutting through the deck, stopping halfway through but it was more than enough damage done. Both the flanking ships were sailing so close that the circle also cut into their forefront cannons. Loaded with explosives as marine battleships tend to be, all three suffered great explosions.

Ruffled disconnected from the circle and slowly returned from being made of wood and metal to flesh and bones.

Sanji desperately patted his pockets for his cigs and Zoro suddenly felt he needed alcohol. Nami too. Robin felt like applauding the girl because that was one _hell_ of a show. Usopp was hiding behind Zoro’s legs and Franky… Franky was in La-La-Land of engineering possibilities.

Brook sipped his tea. “The sea is full of mysteries,” he said sagely.

Then Chopper ran through the door. “Guys! Did you see Ruffled?! She just disappeared!”

Nami turned to the panicking doctor. “She just saved us. Come on guys! Let’s get out of here before reinforcements arrive!”

She was answered with a rather distracted sounding “Aye.”


	8. Fights for what he believes in

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything happens so fast. There is nothing left to fight for.

Saying and doing are two different things. Zora’s mother had taught her that and Zora had responded by doing more than saying. Now she’d said she was going to kill the egg of the sea devil, but doing so was apparently not going to be as easy as that because Luffy had just asked her a question.

“Can you swim?”

Zora found she couldn’t answer it, at least not before she knew; “what’s swim?”

Luffy thought for a moment. “Jump in the water without sinking?”

It was a little amazing, Zora thought, that this person with her now, who couldn’t be accused for being smart or manipulative in any way, was reintroducing her to words that had most likely been lost after the sea disappeared. It didn’t solve the problem though.

“I don’t know if I can swim. I’ve never seen this much water before in my life.” She turned to look at the man who still had his neck stretched over her back to rest his head on her shoulder. “What will happen if I sink?”

“You’ll drown,” the boy deadpanned.

The shaman thought for a second. “That is a form of dying, correct?”

“Yep.”

Contemplating, Zora found herself with very limited choices. She couldn’t risk dying, but she did need to kill the egg.

“Can you swim?” she asked Luffy hopefully.

“Of course not. I’ve eaten a devil fruit, so I’m a hammer in water.”

That said very little to Zora, but Luffy had started with saying he couldn’t swim either. So much for asking him to take her down. But he could stretch.

“If I sink, can you stretch your arms and save me?”

The man’s face distorted a little as he thought. It looked like it wasn’t something he did every day.

“Maybe,” he said at last. “I get really weak in the water, but I’ll try.”

“Good enough,” Zora nodded and untied her shirt. She might never have seen this much water, but she’d played a little with her water ration as a child and had discovered that hair floated. If she wanted to sink all the way to the bottom, she had to have as little resistance as possible.

Luffy watched as Zora removed her gloves. It was difficult to see in the faint light, but there was something about Zora’s skin that didn’t look right. It wasn’t that he could clearly see her bones or that the veins stood out. Zora’s skin looked… sick.

The pirate let his head snap back to its normal position as Zora wiggled out of her shirt and carefully crawled out of the hole. She held onto the dirt and Luffy caught her hand so she wouldn’t fall into the water unprepared.

It hardly felt like skin. Zora’s hand was rough and slightly damp. Something fell between Luffy’s fingers at the touch. It felt wrong. Luffy wasn’t a touchy-feely type of guy, but he knew this wasn’t the way a hand should feel.

“I have been lucky enough to survive, not lucky enough to avoid damage.”

Zora’s whisper was soft and ashamed. Luffy frowned.

“When I take you back to my ship, my doctor can fix you,” he said firmly.

The shaman’s eyes glittered in the light of her medallion and she smiled. “I’d like that.”

Luffy released Zora’s hand and watched her fly backwards and land in the water with a mighty splash that echoed deafeningly in the silence. The devil in the water stirred, coils moving worriedly before settling back into rest.

A strange, dark cloud surrounded the woman in the water. Luffy watched it in wonder for a second before he hit his palm. “She’s never bathed before, of course she’s dirty.”

Zora kept one hand over her mouth and nose while the other tightly gripped the hilt of her cursed sword. The water was cold and stung Zora’s eyes as she opened them. The pounding of her heart and rush of her blood filled her ears and a dizziness was quickly taking over.

The shaman forcefully calmed herself, tore the medallion off her neck, tied it around the hilt of her cursed sword and started praying in her mind. Below her was the egg, and she felt like she was floating in air that pressed in on her, making her movements slow. Still praying, feeling the curse shift to do as Zora asked, she somehow managed to propel herself towards the egg.

A gust of the devil’s breath disturbed her, threw her off course. The disturbance was enough to make Zora falter in her prayers and the curse shifted again. She had to start over.

Her heart pounded. Blood rushed in her ears.

Death was a shadow right outside her field of vision, waiting for her like an old friend.

Zora was close now. The egg only a few kicks away. The curse of her sword was shifting. She finished her prayer. The shell of the egg was thin enough for her to see the infant inside, its eyes closed in peaceful slumber. The sleeping doom of her world and race.

The shaman thrust her sword into the egg and watched it penetrate the head of the infant.

The world was growing dark.

Above the water with his eyes locked on the little woman underwater, Luffy was winding up, holding himself steady with his legs against the walls of the tunnel, and threw his arm into the water. He felt the familiar drain and fought back with the single-mindedness of a man about to die. Just, it wasn’t him that was dying. He could see Zora relaxing her hold on her sword and Luffy knew she was only a minute away from drowning. She was so thin, didn’t have much stamina. Zora fought for a world and people who shunned her, and Luffy couldn’t let her die for them.

Wouldn’t let her die.

His hand grabbed onto the woman’s thin arm and pulled as fast and gently as he could. Zora’s skin didn’t feel quite as wrong this time.

The woman broke the surface and Luffy pressed her protectively against his chest. Zora coughed, sputtered and gasped in his arms and the pirate let out a quiet sigh of relief before he pulled the woman into the dark tunnel.

Zora blinked water out of her eyes and licked her lips. It was strange, really. She thought Death had grabbed her arm and started guiding her away from the living, but she felt so alive.

“Zora. Hey, Zora. Are you okay?”

She couldn’t see anything through the darkness and reached for her throat.

The medallion was gone.

No, of course it was gone. She had wrapped it around her cursed sword, killed the Doom and then Death had dragged her away. But that voice was too loud… “Luffy?”

“Yokatta.” A sigh. “Was it enough to just stick the sword into the egg? Will that kill it?”

Her sword. Zora’s hand flew to her hip. She only had one.

Fear washed over her in an instant, then, just like water, it fell away. It didn’t matter anymore. It was okay. One sword to kill the egg, the second to kill the devil.

Then she suddenly realized she could feel Luffy’s skin against her own. His skin was so smooth. She squirmed and tried to cover herself despite the darkness.

“My shirt,” she tried.

Luffy moved his head and Zora felt every muscle in his arms respond as he held her.

“I can’t find it. Here, take mine.”

Zora’s eyes almost fell out of their sockets in her shock. “B-but then _you’ll_ be shirtless!” she protested so quietly she almost didn’t hear herself.

“That’s alright. I’m a man after all.”

Whatever that had to do with anything, Zora had to clam up at the sound of the water getting restless. A wave hit the mouth of the tunnel and Zora closed her mouth just in time before the water washed over her and Luffy.

“The Devil is waking up,” the shaman whispered and wordlessly slipped into Luffy’s wet but amazingly soft shirt. “We have to return to the village fast.”

Luffy grunted in agreement and let the shaman lead the way. Water continued to flood the tunnel and the two slid out into the well, almost falling. Zora caught herself awkwardly against the walls and Luffy grabbed her around the waist with one arm, the other stretching upwards. The hold he grabbed was thankfully sturdy and he brought the two of them out of the narrow well.

The whole village had gathered around and stared with wide, pale eyes out of their sunken in faces.

Luffy changed his grip on Zora so that she was properly secure in his arms before he landed.

“Luffy, go to my hut and fetch the blessed items. Doesn’t matter which, just bring them to me before the Devil comes!”

“Wakatta!”

Zora turned to face the people she had fed and protected ever since she came to this place. Major was staring at her with something mad glinting in his eyes.

“You are wet, shaman. I suppose that means you have refilled the water. And without help from the girl too. I am impressed.”

“Enough!”

Silence fell, and in it they all heard the rumble coming from underground.

“Major, who have so bragged about having found this safe place and promised to always protect us has instead doomed us all to death!” Shaman yelled as loudly as she could. “Right under our village the Devil of the Sea is nesting.”

“Lies!” Major yelled, furious.

The ground beneath their feet shook and an inhuman cry filled the air.

“Is that enough proof to you? This is the end for us.”

“Zora!”

Luffy was returning with his arms full of all the items he’d found at Zora’s hut.

The earth jumped, causing the villagers and shaman to lose their balance, then it exploded with a deafening sound. Zora rolled by the force until she managed to grab the edge of the well and covered her face with Luffy’s shirt as the air filled with dust. She couldn’t see, but she felt the blessed items as they approached her.

Luffy couldn’t see much either, but for some reason the dust didn’t bother him. Almost like he was in a dust-free bubble, which was definitely cool, but it didn’t help him find Zora or see what happened.

Harsh sunlight broke through the dust and Luffy caught a glimpse of red. His shirt? Nope, it was the annoying mayor guy, crushed under a rock. The pirate made a face and hurried on. Zora should be here somewhere!

“Oi! Zora, I have your stuff!” he called.

Something moved in the dust and Luffy jumped out of the way as a coil of the Sea Devil lashed out. Followed by a stench of rotten fish that made even Luffy’s hardy stomach turn against itself.

“Luffy!”

“Zora?”

The pirate desperately looked around. The monster was coiling everywhere now.

The sound of a sword sounded somewhere behind him and the furious wails of the monster joined the dust in the air. Luffy jumped back and right there was Zora, easily slipping between the devil’s coils.

“Throw me an item!” the shaman yelled and the pirate obeyed, throwing the staff. Then he had to jump out of the way because the devil’s body was covered with mouths! Shark mouths with half of their teeth falling out.

A golden light surrounded Zora, and the dust started to blow away. Now Luffy finally got a good look at what they were fighting.

“Shit, that thing is ugly! It looks like a zombie from Thriller Bark!”

In the light, Luffy could see pieces of bone sticking out all along the monster’s body and its flesh was made up of corpses. Only one eye remined, the other a dark, empty socket, but it looked like it had at least two mouths. Or it had teeth growing haphazardly around the mouth?

Luffy just barely had time to ponder if the devil had two stomachs as well before Zora buried the glowing staff deep into a random coil, only to scream when she got too close to the body and one of the corpses bit her. Luffy quickly threw a punch and grabbed Zora while his arm retracted.

It didn’t look good. Zora’s blood was fizzing and her face was pale. Still, her eyes were hard with the determination of one ready to risk everything.

“Give me another item!” she hissed after Luffy had jumped up to a high place to avoid the flailing monster.

Her hand touched the headband, and the hissing of her wound stopped.

Before them, the Sea Devil was looking around, its only eye searching through what appeared to be tears. Its deafening wails filled the air, and even the Rock Beasts that ate anything that dared make a sound were either sitting still, playing dead or running away.

Zora tied the headband around her head. “Step back, Luffy. This isn’t your fight.”

But the pirate was looking at what had once been Zora’s home, where people had lived under her protection and without any hope. The whole hollow mountain had fallen in on itself, and the chance that anyone but Luffy and Zora had survived was zero. And besides that, somewhere in the rubble Zora’s treasure; the archive was buried.

“It’s not your fight either!” he protested. “There’s nothing here for you to fight for!”

“Yes, there is.”

Zora felt solemn and, funnily enough, almost serene, as she drew her last sword. Because this was it. The Sea Devil turned towards her, towards the light of the blessed items scattered around the last live human and the gift she had received for the suffering she had endured.

“Luffy. Think of your home.”

“What?”

The Devil hissed as it slithered over, eye fixed on Zora.

“I know of a way to move between worlds, but it will only work once, and I have to have an image of the world I want to go to.”

A dark mouth opened, lined with yellowing teeth and full of a dark purple tongue. The Sea Devil tensed and attacked.

Quick as lightning Zora threw her body backwards into Luffy. The pirate felt the air warp around him and when he opened his eyes, not even realising he’d closed them a second, they were behind the monster.

“Think of your home, Luffy,” Zora prompted again. They had left the rest of the blessed items behind and she felt how they entered the devil’s body. “Tell me about it, so that I can open the barrier that separates worlds.”

Luffy thought. “Most of the world is sea,” he started. “I was born in East Blue, but there is a West and South and North Blue too. And somewhere on the Grand Line, the greatest sea of all that loops around the world,  is my ship and my crew.”

The Devil roared and trashed around when it realized Zora had gotten away and that something painful was going down its long throat. Luffy grabbed the thin girl around the waist and jumped to safer ground.

“Close your eyes and tell me more,” Zora whispered in his ear.

Luffy obeyed without thinking. “My ship is named Thousand Sunny-go. And my crew are Franky, who built Sunny, Nami, my navigator, Robin reads a lot, Sanji cooks the best food in the world, Chopper is my doctor and he’ll see to that your wounds are treated.”

Zora gently pulled free of Luffy’s hold, but held onto his hand. “Keep talking,” she urged gently as her magic started building. The Sea Devil would spot them soon.

“Brook is a live skeleton and a great musician,” Luffy continued, growing excited as he went on. “Zoro is cool, but he gets lost and sleeps all the time. You’ll love Usopp! He loves to tell lies.”

Swinging her sword, Zora opened a passage by the bond between Luffy and his world.

Luffy felt a surge of energy that sucked him in, surprising him enough to throw his arms out to regain his balance, losing his hold of Zora’s hand. His eyes flew open. Zora stood before him, smiling the happiest smile Luffy had seen on her face. Behind her the Sea Devil roared and attacked. Zora turned to meet it with her sword.


	9. But who can stand against the Devil?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The final battle and the aftermath

Thousand Sunny was sailing quietly, a little unsurely heading towards the island the log pose pointed to. It’s not like she had anywhere else to go, but it felt wrong for everyone aboard to keep sailing without their captain.

Everyone was trying to occupy themselves as they tried to think of what to do next. Ruffled stayed on Sunny’s head. Robin and Chopper were going through books in hopes of finding something about travelling between worlds. Thus far they had only found a series of books Robin had bought just to pass time; something about a mist full of rainbows that apparently was a gateway to a paradise, but that didn’t really help them. Zoro was in the room at the top of the mast training, Sanji was preparing meals and making cookies to keep his hands busy, Usopp and Franky were working on a project the latter hoped to talk Ruffled into helping them with later. Nami stood at the helm.

Brook sat on the deck, sipping tea and looking at the sky.

But this was the Grand Line, the sea where the impossible happens right out of the blue. Sometimes even literally. And Brook watched as a cloud of dust suddenly started to rain down from a fixed point in the sky, just off to portside.

“Ara…” Brook just stared, unable to connect with his brain, until he saw a figure fall out of the hole in the sky.

Followed by the air filling with an ear-piercing roar and a monster started appearing from the same fixed spot in the air.

Brook screamed. Nami followed and from all around the ship, Luffy’s crew appeared, staring dumbfounded at the monster growing out of literally nothing!

From the Sunny’s head, Ruffled suddenly threw a spear, aiming for the monster’s face. Belatedly Brook realized the unknown beast only had one eye, and looked like a snake whose flesh Hogback had made from whatever corpse he happened to come across.

The little figure that had fallen out of the sky first, suddenly stretched and a familiar hand latched onto Sunny’s railing. Usopp was first to see it.

“Guys! Guys, guys! It’s Luffy!”

Sanji was the first to run to the railing, only to regret it as Luffy unceremoniously crashed into him.

“Luffy!” Nami called, relief thick in her voice.

Their captain was back, shirtless, covered with little scratches and a layer of grey dust that caked with his sweat.

Luffy however only threw a glance around him. “We have to save Zora!”

“What?”

“She’s in that thing’s mouth!”

Ruffled threw another spear from Sunny’s head, and another. The monster was still growing out of the sky, twisting and turning and filling the air with screeches and a thick, rotten stench that made everyone’s eyes tear up.

“Franky, I’m turning the ship! Can we shoot that thing with the Hou Cannon?”

“Of course, Nami!” the cyborg called back confidently. For something of that size, their normal cannon wouldn’t even make a dent. “Usopp!”

“On it!” the sniper yelled over his shoulder where he was already at the hatch.

“No wait! We have to get Zora away first!” Luffy yelled desperately.

Just then, a light broke through the monster’s body.

The girl who had been nameless until she arrived in this world, froze in shock. She knew that light.

“Shaman?” she whispered. How could that be? How was shaman fighting the Sea Devil? She shouldn’t. She couldn’t! The Devil was pure poison to the touch! Shaman already had the scars to prove it, and that was only from run-ins with the Droppings! The real Devil’s poison was so much more potent!

The light was like a force and the enormous monster spasmed as it started to crack all over, as if it was about to explode.

For a heart-stopping moment, Ruffled thought it would, and if all that poison rained down on them…

The Sea Devil’s neck opened at the side, cutting its head off halfway.

Luffy turned to Zoro. “Can you cut off the rest of the head?”

“Of course,” the swordsman smirked. “Send me up.”

Luffy ballooned, and Zoro jumped… only to get smashed back by a tree!

“You can’t! The poison!” Ruffled yelled hoarsely, hoping to be heard over the noise the Devil was making.

“What poison?!” Chopper asked even as Ruffled’s legs grew together with the railing. All of her turned into a living doll of wood whose arms grew together to form a giant baseball bat.

In the air, the spec of light grew stronger. The Sea Devil turned towards it, unfazed by its wounds, and once again opened its mouth to eat the light.

Ruffled waited. Shaman was falling and was somehow charging with magic.

The nameless girl took a swing at the Devil’s head, hitting its rotten snout so hard it came off, but luckily it was enough for the monster to cease its chase of the shaman.

Luffy wound up and let his fist fly to grab Zora.

In the air, the shaman was dying, the Devil’s poison killing her, but she refused to let go before she had separated the head from its body. So she kept charging, and when something suddenly knocked off the monster’s snout and it turned its head to show the gaping hole Zora had done to it before, the sword in Zora’s hand sung as she wielded it and finished her life’s mission.

The nameless girl of a dying world watched as the Devil she had feared for all her life lost its head from a blade of light. Just like that, it was over.

But not really.

Luffy cried out in pain when his hand finally grabbed Zora, but his hand numbed and he watched as his arm returned without Zora. Chopper was at his captain’s side in a flash, and when he saw the damage, he poured a whole bottle of green goo over Luffy’s hand in a panic because Luffy’s skin looked like it was melting!

The nameless girl made of wood quickly turned her baseball bat arms into a branchy hand and caught the fading light of the last shaman.

The dead Sea Devil hit the ocean.

“FRANKY! USOPP! HOU CANNON!!” Nami shrieked hysterically because if that wave hit them they would sink!

The two were fast to obey and take position, but the it would take a few seconds for the cannon to charge and the wave was already so close.

Luffy wrapped his arms around the wood doll standing on Sunny’s railing and was carefully bringing back a hand gently closed around a tiny body. One of Zora’s legs hung between the fingers.

The wave raised above them, and the whole ship jerked when Usopp unannounced fired Sunny’s greatest weapon straight into the wall of water, creating a hole the ship sailed into, and while the hole closed around them and Sunny for a heart-stopping moment was completely surrounded by the sea, she still made it out of the water, still afloat, but with a much wetter crew.

Slowly, the sea calmed down and the air was once again clear. Nobody would ever know what had happened here.

Luffy was still wrapped around the wood doll, but it wasn’t made of wood anymore. At least not completely. The doll, which Luffy could now tell was a girl, was wearing the same kind of clothes as Zora. But that wasn’t important.

Right before them, the hand that had held Zora was open, and on the palm the woman lay.

“Shaman!” a broken voice called.

Luffy couldn’t speak. Zora was still wearing his shirt, but under the clear sunlight of his own world he could finally see how grey her skin was, how exhausted she looked and how her body really was barely more than skin and bones.

“Shaman, it’s the sea,” the broken voice called again, quiet and desperately hopeful. “The Devil is dead. You’re free.”

Yes, Zora was free, but not the way Luffy had wanted her to be. He had wanted her to meet his crew, to become a part of it.

Now Zora lay motionless in front of him, dead.

A sob broke through the air and the hand that held Zora lowered. Luffy watched, numb as Zora’s frail body slipped into the water of the ocean… and was gone.

 

* * *

 

The space-time witch Yûko poured herself a cup of heated sake. The day was warm, but she felt cold inside. She never interacted with a world’s business, she only fulfilled wishes. The Shaman Zora had gotten her wish, and so had Yûko’s. She hadn’t wanted to become the catalyst of a world’s destruction; and she hadn’t. Zora’s world would stay around until it faded away, it would just not have humans in it. With the Sea Devil gone from the world, the Droppings would eventually become corpses again and a new form of life would cover this new world once filled with water.

That didn’t make the sake taste any better. Zora’s fate had been crueller than it had had to be.

“You chose to be loyal,” Yûko said to the air. “Your wish has been fulfilled, and I will keep your wish for love and freedom here.”

The witch’s pale hand patted the white katana by her side. One day he would arrive; the man who would once again wield this special sword, unaware of its history.

 

* * *

 

_**Epilogue** _

Nobody really understood what had happened and Luffy was uncharacteristically quiet. He sat on the deck, still shirtless, and let Chopper treat his wounded hand. They had found a formation of rocks and decided to anchor for now.

Ruffled sat on the railing staring at the water.

Sanji had said he was going to make dinner, and Luffy had just huffed. He hadn’t actually eaten anything in quite a while and he was hungry, but the sight of Zora’s body and the memory of her last smile tied the rubber captain’s stomach into knots. Zora had fooled him and saved him at the price of her own life, and she had been fully prepared to pay it.

But Luffy hadn’t. As a captain he was responsible for the lives of his crew and he would protect them until they decided their own fate. It’s just that Zora hadn’t decided anything. Luffy couldn’t understand why she had so vehemently tried to protect something that didn’t even exist! Her village was gone. Why hadn’t she come with Luffy to his world? Why had she stayed to fight?

Failure was a bitter, bitter taste in Luffy’s mouth.

“What do you call many trees?”

The question was quiet. Chopper looked up from his work on Luffy’s hand and Usopp, who had been leaning against the railing beside the immobile Ruffled turned to look at the girl.

“What do you mean?” the sniper asked confused.

The young girl looked up. Her eyes were red, but there was a hard edge in them.

Chopper thought she looked oddly healthy, all things considered. Her skin wasn’t grey and her eyes had changed into an earthly brown. Even her hair was slowly changing from black to a very dark brown with hints of red in it.

“One tree is one tree. But if there are… a hundred trees, you don’t call them a hundred trees.”

“No, we call it a forest,” Usopp answered truthfully, still confused.

The girl nodded slowly. “My name is Forest.”

Luffy sat up a little straighter. “You’re from the same world as Zora,” he suddenly realized. Well, he had sort of realized it before, but it hadn’t connected until now. “You’re the one she sent away and got me in return.”

The girl– Forest– turned and blinked slowly. “I don’t think that was supposed to happen.”

“It wasn’t,” Luffy agreed. Zora had apologized too many times for his arrival in her world to be Zora’s work.

Forest looked out over the sea and said nothing more.

“So,” Zoro suddenly spoke up. He had been seated against the main mast, watching carefully and rubbing the black eye Forest had given him when she stopped him from cutting the monster that had fallen out of the sky. “What are we going to do, Captain?”

“…I’m going to be the king of pirates!” the rubber man yelled, startling everyone. “That is my dream, and I wanted to bring Zora with us!”

Unexpectedly, Luffy turned towards the girl seated on the railing and just looked at her.

Forest looked like a deer caught in the headlights. Her eyes were opened wide and her stance was stiff.

“Dream?” she said slowly. “Zora… wanted me to dream.”

“That’s why you’re here,” Luffy nodded, even though he didn’t quite understand it. Zora’s world wasn’t a place where dreams could be realized though, so it made sense.

The girl who had never been named by her parents or people stood. She had named herself just now, and she did have a dream; she wanted to see trees. A hundred trees that grew and lived and breathed and whispered in winds devoid of sand and dust.

“We’ll let you off on the next island,” Luffy decided. Or you can travel with us until you find an island you like and realize your dream. I don’t want you on my crew.

“Good,” Forest said. “I ate the earth fruit; I feel unsettled without solid ground underneath my feet.”

Luffy smiled, then turned. “Hey Sanji! I’m STARVING!”

**Author's Note:**

> I will try to update weekly, since the story's mostly done either way. If any of you are waiting for the monster "on top of the world", it is in the works as well, no worries...


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